


A Really Bad Day

by cathy1967



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathy1967/pseuds/cathy1967
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is tired of Scorpius popping up everywhere, but can't seem to outrun him. He has a bad experience which rattles his belief that others are fundamentally good at heart and realizes there's only one way to break the stalemate between himself and his biggest fan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Really Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kazbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazbaby/gifts).



> Rating: PG-13 - at least. There's a lot of John-whumping in this one, as always. Might not be up to everybody's liking, but it wasn't written for everybody. It was written for Kaz and I know she likes this sort of thing. :D
> 
> Note: This is AU if ever there was an AU. D'Argo is alive, Zhaan is dead. There is no baby, but John has lost the wormhole tech. There is no Noranti and Stark is not featured in this story. No Jool either, by the way.
> 
> Dedication: I know this has been a long time coming, Kaz, but here you go. :D I could have gone on and on and on with this story, but since I wanted you to read it before we both grow too old to see … *g* Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just playing. I'll put'em back when I'm done.

If landing his behind in the UTs had done anything good for him, then it would be that he was a lot fitter than he'd ever been before. That was generally what running away from people, who wanted to hurt him, did, after all.

He skittered around a corner and slammed into the opposite wall of the narrow alley. The sting in his shoulder was barely noticeable over the rush of adrenaline blasting through his veins. A pulse pistol blast hit the plaster just over his head, forcing him to duck a little when he pushed off the wall and raced on as fast as his legs could carry him. Outrunning Peacekeepers was doable, but very hard work. They generally had more stamina then Humans, which left him at a slight disadvantage. On the other hand, they were not as organized as some people he had known and that slowed them down and gave him a leg up on this chase.

The consensus these days was that Peacekeepers in general didn't give a crap about him. But Scorpius wanted him bad and his troops were the ones John was currently running from. He wound his way through alleys that became increasingly narrower, running left when he would have chosen right, ducking through archways and into people's courtyards, running through flocks of unidentifiable critters, anything to mask what direction he was going in. Not that it mattered. Those bastards were hot on his heels and he was running out of juice. It wouldn't take long before this chase was over and he knew he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this predicament right now.

This world was another commerce planet - one Aeryn had sworn was off the beaten track - and they had been able to spend almost a full day without getting into trouble. And then they had split up. Aeryn had returned to the pod while John had decided to take a closer look at the market place. Bad move. He had barely set foot in the large square that held the market place before he was spotted. And that was over an hour ago. There was a ban against off-world electronics apart from the local ones, which meant that the com-badge bouncing around on his chest had no immediate effect. He couldn't call Aeryn for help, in other words, and the further he ran, the further away from the pod he got.

Panting, his legs burning, his chest heaving, he threw himself around another corner, but instead of another wall to propel him forward, he ran face first into some sort of obstruction. The obstruction turned out to be a statue on a pedestal, which obviously wasn't built to take that kind of abuse. The statue toppled off the pedestal and broke into several pieces.

John barely noticed it, put pushed away from the pedestal and dashed across the smallish square, heading for the furthest alley. But he didn't get that far. A blast ripped up the dusty ground in front of his feet, bringing him to a staggering halt. Stunned that the Peacekeepers had managed to get ahead of him, he focused on the shooter and realized that this guy wasn't a Peacekeeper. Although there was no doubt about the guy's official status, the uniform was not Peacekeeper garb. Nervous energy jittered through him at the thought of being delayed by this guy and he subconsciously reached for one pulse pistol.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Peacekeeper," the guy said. "We've got you covered."

The 'we' part of that was what made him raise his hands in surrender, because he became aware that this guy wasn't alone. One he could have taken on, but more than one diminished his odds considerably and he really needed to get going. "I'm not a Peacekeeper," he said as calmly as he could.

"Save it for the Sovereign," a voice said behind him. These guys didn't play fair, as it turned out. They did not give him a chance to say anything else. Before he knew what hit him, he was face down on the dusty ground, having his arms forcefully yanked behind his back. They cuffed him, then hauled him back to his feet while one of them disarmed him. Then they ushered him toward the mouth of the alley he had been heading towards. He sent a quick glance back over one shoulder and witnessed the untimely arrival of the Peacekeepers. Curiously enough, the platoon remained where they were rather than rush in and try to take custody of him.

***

The palace looming on the other side of the town from the landing pads had seemed unreal somehow; huge, but unreal. Now that he saw it up close, he understood why. The whole building looked like it had been carved from a single big rock. Towers wound their way to the blue sky overhead, covered in intricate designs that gave them an organic feel. The white stone shot through with dark veins reminded him of marble and it even had that shiny look to it that polished marble could have.

The palace guards - he had determined they had to be that at least - ushered him forward, none of them caring what he might have to say. He had tried a few times to convince them that he was not a Peacekeeper, but they didn't seem to be listening.

Once inside the palace walls, John kept his trap shut, hoping that someone higher up the ladder might be more inclined to give him the time of day. Why he had been arrested in the first place was beyond him, and none of his captors were willing to share that information with him.

They ushered him into a large, vaulted room with a dais in the middle that held a large stone seat. He figured it was some sort of throne room, but whoever occupied the throne normally was absent. Off to the right, a group of people were involved in a hefty discussion. The design of the throne room itself did not carry sound very well, because although he could hear the hum of the voices, he couldn't make out any words.

The guards ushered him toward the group and that caught the attention of one man, an elderly one with white hair and a beard to match. He raised his hands, stopping the others in the group, and stepped forward. "What is this?" he asked, his cold gaze raking over John like he was inspecting a particularly vile bug.

John opened his mouth, but was immediately slapped over the back of the head. "Ow," he snapped and sent a glare back at the guard who had shot at him earlier.

"Prisoners will speak only when spoken to," the man said sternly, then turned his attention to the older man. "My Lord Chancellor," he said and bowed. "This Peacekeeper has destroyed the statue in Liberty Square."

Statue? John blinked. That was what this was about? "That was an accident," he blurted out, which earned him another hard slap over the back of the head. "Stop that," he snapped at the guard.

Apparently talking back to these guys wasn't in his best interest right now. The guard pulled out a handheld device of some sort and jammed it against John's shoulder. His knees went out beneath him and he dropped down hard on them. That bastard had just tazered him.

"Begging your pardon, my Lord Chancellor," the guard said to White Beard.

The Lord Chancellor eyed John with something that bordered on disgust and waved a dismissive hand. "The usual punishment will suffice," he said. "Peacekeepers and their destructive ways are not welcome here," he added and turned his back on the scene.

The guards hauled John back to his feet and dragged him out of the throne room. He had a bit of trouble keep up because his legs had gone rubbery from the jolt he'd been given. "Have you people ever heard of a fair trial?" he snarled and even his voice was a little jittery.

The guard with the tazer gave him a dark look. "You will be quiet, Peacekeeper," he countered.

"I'm not a frigging Peacekeeper," John insisted. At this point he was pretty concerned about where this was going. Surely they wouldn't execute him for breaking a damned statue, would they?

They dragged him into the bowls of the palace and he was once again reminded of the similarities between Sebaceans and Humans. This was obviously the prison level. The guard with the tazer opened one of the cast-iron gates, which led into a smallish room that contained absolutely nothing. Before John could make a fuss, they again floored him and one of the other guards wrapped something around his neck. A metallic click heralded the sealing of his fate, it would seem. Someone removed the cuffs before they left the cell, closing the door behind them.

For a moment he just lay there, cheek pressed against the cold, hard stone of the floor, while he took that moment to gather his thoughts, and then he pushed up on his hands and knees and climbed back to his feet. "Every frigging place I go," he growled and sent a long look around the room, inspecting solid stone walls, arches carved into the walls facing the corridor beyond, and the one cast-iron barred door separating him from freedom. "I have got to stop drawing attention to myself like this," he muttered and grimaced. The collar they had slapped him with chafed slightly, drawing his attention to whatever it was supposed to be. He reached up with both hands to figure out what it was for, but the second his fingers connected with the metal band, he knew. The electric burst that slammed through him stopped his breath and turned his limbs to goo. It didn't last long enough to bring him down, but he staggered sideways into the wall, all his nerve endings tingling.

Okay, so these fine people were very much in favor of electricity as a punishment. It took him a moment to regain any semblance of breath and after that a few minutes more before he was able to push away from the support of the wall. Slightly dizzy, he bent forward and grabbed his knees, eyes closed. "I am not setting foot on another planet for a few years to come," he promised himself, his voice rusty. Then he straightened up slowly, feeling the ache in his muscles that the jolt had left behind. He reminded himself not to touch the damned collar again before turning his attention to the iron bars of the door. "Gotta clear this up somehow," he muttered and walked somewhat unsteadily over to the door. "Hey!" he called. "Can anyone hear me?"

There was no reply from the corridor beyond.

He stepped closer to the bars, trying to see through them with little luck. Instinctively, he reached for the iron bars, intent on grabbing a hold of them, which turned out to be the next bad move in a long line of bad moves, because the bars were also electrified, but the current running through the door had a lot more kick to it than the collar or the tazer.

Fortunately his response to the current was not to clamp his hands around the bars, but rather to release them. The slap that he got from the door blasted him backward into the opposite wall. He slid down onto the floor, the instant burn in his hands deeply unpleasant while the rest of him seemed to have gone numb in one stroke. Once more he struggled to start breathing again and his vision actually managed to narrow into a pinpoint before he got his lungs going again. And breathing was not a pleasant thing to do right now. He felt scorched on the inside, his throat sore and scratchy. His hands were shaking badly when he raised them up to inspect his palms, which were now an angry red. "Don't touch the door," he muttered unsteadily and focused blearily on it. "Check."

***

How long he had spent in the confines of his prison cell was something he could only guess at. Since there were no windows, his guess was wild and he didn't even attempt to pinpoint any time frame. It had been long enough for him to recover marginally from all the shock's he'd been given since his arrival in this blasted palace. He was still a little sore and his palms were still burning, but he wasn't incapacitated in any way.

Since there was nothing to do, he sat where he had slid down the wall, knees pulled up, while he fiddled with a thread he had pulled off his jacket. It was only at the sound of footsteps coming along the corridor that he looked up. He got to his feet, instinctively shoving the thread into his pocket, and stepped forward to meet whoever was coming face on and hoped he would get a chance to tell his version of the events that had led to his arrest.

The man who eventually stopped outside the cell door made him a little weary. He was about a head taller than John and seemed twice as broad, but there was not an ounce of fat on that guy. He was pure muscle and he didn't exactly look affable. He was dressed in the same charcoal gray pants as the rest of the guards he had met, but that was where the comparison ended. The black tank top he wore was stretched to the breaking point over his well-toned chest. He had copper cuffs around both wrists and intricate tattoos on both shoulders. His hair was short and pitch black, his eyes a peculiar light grey bordering on white. He had a scar going from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth, a mouth which at this moment was displaying a lopsided smirk.

Something told John that he was about to get beaten into a pulp by this guy and he pulled back a step when the cell door swung open and the gorilla stepped inside, the smirk now turning into a grin, while the look in his eyes was almost feral.

"Look, there's been a misunderstanding here," John tried, raising both hands in what he hoped was a calming manner. "I'm not a Peacekeeper. And the thing with the statue ... that was an accident. I was ..."

His explanation was cut short when the gorilla pressed his left thumb against the inside of the right cuff. Obviously, the cuff contained a remote of some sort, because the collar around John's neck sparked to life. He slammed back against the wall, desperately wanting to reach for the collar to pull it away from his neck, but he couldn't control his hands. All he managed was a grunt on the exhale of the air he had in his lungs. His knees had locked, every muscle in his body was tensed to the breaking point, and he couldn't even give vent to the pain cruising through is system right now.

And then it stopped. The intensity of the pain along with the severe strain on every single muscle in his body sent him crashing to the floor. He only barely managed to brace himself on half numb, half tingling hands. In part the sensation of being electrocuted like that was similar to that damned chair that Scorpy loved so much.

He couldn't help gagging because yet again he couldn't draw a decent breath. When air finally rushed in, it was crystal clear and ice cold. He sucked in a lung full, then slowly raised his head and gave the big guy a baleful look; a look that quickly turned to concern, because the big guy had his thumb hovering over the cuff again. "No, wait," he rasped, but his plea fell on deaf ears.

Apparently, the current in that damned collar could be adjusted, because the big guy alternated between rendering him completely immobile and turning it down just enough that John still had enough control to give vent to the pain.

When he was a jittering mess unable to get off the floor if his life had depended on it, the big guy finally laid off and left the cell again. With his heart racing painfully in his chest and his head about to split open while any move he wanted to make was just too painful, he just lay there, breathing in short, shallow gasps, his thoughts muddled. It didn't take too long after that before darkness descended on him.

***

Time passed and intermittently one of the guards - mostly the big guy, though - would drop by to torture the crap out of him before disappearing again. He was beginning to have severe issues, ticks that wouldn't go away, painful heart flickers, shaking hands and difficulty to keep his mind on one track for more than a few minutes at a time and he was starting to fear that this may mean permanent damage.

He had lost track of how many times they had pulled him through the wringer, but assumed he had been in this hellhole for at least four days. And then the door opened again. His immediate response to this was to raise one hand, palm out and lowering his head. Nothing he said made any difference and he knew that any submissive actions on his part where ignored, but he still couldn't stop himself.

The big guy wasn't alone this time around and when the two accompanying guards grabbed him, he was sure they would add insult to injury and beat the crap out of him. All they did, though, was floor him and cuff his hands behind his back before pulling him back to his feet. With the amount of electrocution he had gone through, he was not even going to pretend that he could walk two steps without his knees folding up under him and he made that abundantly clear to his captors by not even making the effort of either standing or walking. They didn't seem to care, though. The two newcomers each grabbed an arm and they dragged him with them.

It took him a moment to realize where he was when they arrived. He had a bit of trouble focusing his eyes on occasion and right now was one of those occasions. But when they dropped him and he landed painfully hard on his knees, he knew he was back in the throne room.

Weakened as he was, he couldn't keep his head up or his eyes focused and so stared blankly down at the marble floor, swaying lightly in his effort to at least remain on his knees.

The footfalls of someone approaching made him squint in an attempt to focus his eyes and then he raised his head. What he saw was a dress. It was made of some sort of glittering blue fabric and it hugged its wearing tightly. He ran his eyes over the shapely legs up to a voluptuous chest and a pair of ice-blue eyes looking down at him. A halo of blonde hair framed a heart-shaped face with slightly pouty lips and a smallish nose. Her features were downright perfect and if it hadn't been for the chill in her eyes, she would have looked beautiful.

"So, this is the Peacekeeper that destroyed my statute?" she asked and glanced sideways at White Beard.

"It is, Sovereign," the old guy agreed.

"He does not seem capable of such a feat," she said thoughtfully and returned her icy stare to John.

"'m not a Peacekeeper," John muttered, having to force his mouth to obey the otherwise simple command of talking.

"The guards have vented their frustrations on him, I'm afraid," White Beard said and John scoffed mentally at that.

Apparently, this did not please the Sovereign, but John could no longer keep his head up and so missed whatever look her slight annoyance might turn into. To his immediate surprise, she grabbed his chin and raised his head again. "Why would you do that, Peacekeeper?" she asked.

"'m not a Peacekeeper," he repeated a little more forcefully.

"Excuse me?" This seemed to surprise her and she glanced at White Beard. "He says he's not a Peacekeeper. Were you aware of that?"

"We have had Peacekeepers in our custody before, claiming not to be to save themselves from punishment," White Beard countered evenly.

The Sovereign returned her attention to John, eyeing him for a moment. "What is your name?" she asked. "Your rank? Which regiment do you hail from?"

"'m not a Peacekeeper," he muttered. Gravity was dragging him down. He was struggling to remain on his knees.

"Do a scan on him. I want to know if he's a carrier born Sebacean or not," the Sovereign said, released his chin and took a step back.

The loss of the vague support her hand had provided kicked him in the teeth and he keeled over, hitting the floor face first since he had no free hands to brace himself with.

"And, for frell's sake, leave him alone until we find out who he is," he heard her say before the world faded out again.

***

He woke up because he was shocked into awareness by the collar. With a halfhearted yelp, he rolled over on his side, barely managing to stop himself from touching the offensive device. The shock had only lasted a split second, though, and he realized he probably had touched it somehow, thereby setting it off.

He was back in his cell, lying on the chilly stone floor. With a groan, he rolled over on his back and blinked blearily up at the ceiling. It was vaulted like in the throne room, just on a much smaller scale. As prison cells went, this wasn't the worst he had seen. If there had been some furniture, it would have the potential of being downright cozy. But since it was a place of suffering, he wasn't inclined to even think of this cell as adequate.

Raising his right hand up where he could see it, he eyed his shivering fingers while trying to determine what the Sovereign would do once she realized that not only wasn't he a Peacekeeper, he wasn't even Sebacean. Had she heard about him? It was hard to say, but at least the guards were under order not to hurt him anymore. That had to count for something and maybe he would be able to regain some of his composure before he was dragged back to see her again.

"Gotta keep m' trap shut," he muttered under his breath and let his hand drop onto the floor again. Moving was tough when his muscles felt fried. It wasn't as bad as the Chair had been, even though it was right up there alongside that experience.

He considered briefly to move, but decided not to bother. Instead, he closed his eyes and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

***

The Sovereign was a ruler by succession. Having been born into her inherited position, she had been brought up to be the leader of her people and for the majority, her people seemed content with her rule; as long as said rule kept the Peacekeepers away from their home worlds.

The Lord Chancellor cleared his throat, drawing her attention away from the stacks of flimsies that had piled up while she had been away for a weeken. There really wasn't anyone to take her place when the rare occasion arose where she needed a little breathing time away from the officiousness of her station. She eyed the man, noting again the fatigue on his old face. "Yes?"

"We appear to have visitors," the Lord Chancellor said and glanced off toward the main entrance.

The Sovereign turned her attention toward the young and inexperienced guard striding across the throne room. That he was inexperienced was very evident in his nervousness. He bowed when he stopped at the appropriate distance from her. "Sovereign," he said, his voice jittery.

"What news do you bring me?" she asked, addressing him directly. Under her father's reign, the Sovereign had spoken only to his closest advisers and any questions from guards fell on deaf ears if the Lord Chancellor was not around. She had chosen to circumvent that rule and was known to speak directly to her underlings, a fact that made them all a little nervous still.

"A Peacekeeper begs an audience," the guard said, nervously keeping his eyes on the floor in front of his feet.

"A Peacekeeper?" she asked and glanced at the Lord Chancellor, whose expression had grown rather cold. "Here?"

"Yes, Sovereign. He is waiting outside," the guard confirmed.

She considered the edacity it took for any Peacekeeper to be at her door without an invitation, but then nodded. "Send him in," she said, which caused the Lord Chancellor to give her a baffled look.

The guard turned and rushed back out. Moments later, a black-clad individual strode in, followed by an officious looking Peacekeeper captain. The black-clad individual taxed her understanding, because that creature was by no means Sebacean and therefore should not call itself a Peacekeeper.

He bowed lightly, a not at all appropriate greeting for her status, and then smiled, his black lips stretching. "Sovereign," he said in a tone that indicated they were old friends and that he could therefore take such liberties as that tone of voice.

"You are not Sebacean," she countered, eying him with the rapt curiosity of a would-be scientist.

"Half," he countered evenly. "I am Scorpius."

Narrowing her eyes at this half-breed, she wondered what sway he held over Peacekeeper High Command to be allowed any kind of station within Peacekeeper ranks. "But of course you are," she countered, recalling vague rumors of this being. She had never been truly aware of his origins since Peacekeeper affairs normally did not interest her in the slightest. Finding him on her doorstep now, she was unsure of what to make of him and decided to wait and see rather than jump to conclusions. "And what brings you here to my little part of the Uncharted Territories?"

His expression dissolved into something akin to regret. "We are in pursuit of an escaped convict," he explained, his tone slightly suffering now. "Unfortunately, said convict has chosen to make landfall on your world and we saw no other option but to pursue him."

The Lord Chancellor gave her a look she could easily interpret, but for now chose to ignore. "And what makes you think that this convict is still on this world?" she asked Scorpius.

"One of my platoons witnessed his arrest by your guards, Sovereign," he said and tried that smile again.

The Sovereign assumed that he thought he was charming. If she had been in less control of her emotional spectrum, she would have shuddered at this mimicry of a smile. "Ah, so you assume this convict is now in my custody," she stated, to which he merely nodded. She noted the paleness and obvious concern in his companion, who was Sebacean and Peacekeeper to the core in her opinion. "And you expect what?"

Scorpius' expression tensed a little. It was obvious that he was beginning to understand his companion's nervousness. "Since this convict has destroyed one of your precious statues, we are of course more than willing to reimburse you for the loss when we take custody of him."

She pretended to think it over by drawing her brows down into a frown and briefly covering her lips with her fingers. "Should we not first establish if this latest prisoner is actually the male you are seeking?" she asked.

"But of course," Scorpius agreed, his tone bordering on the benevolent.

The Sovereign glanced at her honor guard. "Bring the prisoner," she said.

***

Since the guards now left John alone, he had recovered to a point where he felt fairly together, even though the solitude and lack of fresh air was taking its toll on his reserves.

There was nothing for him to do but sit around and stare into space. He had no idea how much time had passed since his incarceration, but he assumed it had been at least a week by now, if not more.

Currently, he was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, knees pulled up, while he twirled that piece of thread he had pulled off his jacket between his fingers. When he heard approaching footsteps, he looked up, losing interest in the thread. He rose to his feet and briefly considered an escape attempt when a single guard turned up outside the door, but when he was joined by others, he suffocated that idea, turned his back and offered his wrists for binding. Playing along with this charade would at least insure that they did not activate the collar. He'd had enough of being electrocuted to last him a lifetime.

The guards approached him carefully and one of them handcuffed him. Nobody spoke and he had already learned that he would not get anything out of asking questions; nothing apart from a zap from the collar, that was.

They took him back toward the throne room and John assumed the Sovereign had finally found out that he wasn't a Peacekeeper and therefore hopefully not a threat. But when he stepped through the doors to the throne room - a side-entrance that was obviously only meant for prisoners - he stopped short, causing the guard walking behind him to plow into him.

"Keep moving," the man snarled and shoved him forward.

If he hadn't been nervous before, he was so tenfold now. Scorpius and Braca were waiting for him and he could literally feel his heart drop. Apparently, the Sovereign had made a deal with Scorpy, which would mean nothing but bad things for John.

The guards had to force him forward. He was through playing nice if they were going to hand him over to Scorpy just like that, and he wasn't going to make it easy on them.

"Is this the convict you were speaking of?" the Sovereign asked Scorpius.

Scorpius met John's eyes and that vicious little smile spread over his black lips. "Oh yes," he almost cooed, covered the distance to John and stopped right in front of him. He slipped a hand behind John's neck, raising goose bumps on his skin. "There you are, John," Scorpius said, his tone heavy with joy.

Desperate to be away from that cadaverous son of a bitch, John tried to pull back, but Scorpius' grip on his neck was unrelenting.

"You have given us quite a chase," the half-breed said, then shifted his attention to the impassive-looking Sovereign. "We will take this one off your hands and reimburse you for the destruction of that statue. Name your price."

John dared a glance at the woman, finding that her expression was bland, her eyes locked on Scorpius. "That statue is irreplaceable," she finally said and made a small insignificant move with one hand, which obviously meant something to her guards. They grabbed John and hauled him away from Scorpius and two of them stepped between John and his nemesis. "Besides, you are in violation of our treaty with Peacekeeper High Command, Scorpius."

In John's opinion this could not end well for the Sovereign. There was most likely a command carrier somewhere in the area, and if that was the case, this planet could be laid waste in no time at all.

"I am aware of the treaty...," Scorpius began, but the Sovereign cut him off.

"And yet here you are, trespassing in my system, bringing your troops to my world, upsetting the balance among my people with your mere presence," she said, her tone icy. "The treaty clearly states that no Peacekeeper is allowed in this system without an express invitation from me and me alone. I do not recall having issued such an invitation to you or your troops."

"To be fair, he trespassed here first. We were merely chasing him," Scorpius countered, attempting to defend himself, which confused John because Scorpy didn't sound altogether sure of himself right now.

"I do not consider his presence here a trespass. He is not a Peacekeeper," the Sovereign said, her tone now hard as rock. "Nor, would it seem, is he even Sebacean, although my scientists are hard pressed to determine what exactly he is."

Scorpius spread his arms in surrender. "I offer you my deepest apologies for having violated the treaty. This man is highly dangerous and very important to our research. Please let us relieve you of his presence so you can go back to reassuring your people that all is well," he suggested almost timidly.

The Sovereign eyed him for a moment, then took a step forward, which activated her guards into tightening the half circle around her. "No," she said simply and raised her chin a little. "You and your troops have one arn to vacate this system. If you are not gone when that arn is up, we will consider your presence here an official violation of the treaty. That means war, Scorpius. A war the Peacekeepers cannot win."

John stared at her in confusion. There was no doubt that she believed what she said and it made him wonder if such a thing was actually possible. He glanced nervously at Scorpius, only to realize that Scorpius evidently believed it too, because the half-breed now looked decidedly nervous. "But, Sovereign ..." he tried, only to be cut off again.

"ARE YOU HARD OF HEARING?" the Sovereign roared. Her voice was so strong that it reverberated through the throne room, throwing echoes at them from all sides. "LEAVE! NOW!"

Braca pawed at Scorpius' arm, his expression full of fear now. "We must leave," he hissed. "Our presence here alone is a violation."

Scorpius made a dismissive gesture, then half-bowed to the Sovereign, gave John a brief glance, then turned around and strode out with Braca hot on his heels.

And all John could do was stand there and watch them leave. He couldn't believe that he'd been saved in the nick of time. But just because the Sovereign had refused to hand him over to Scorpius didn't mean that he was free to go, obviously. And with that sudden furry she had displayed, he wasn't so sure she was mentally stable.

For a moment, the entire hall was quiet as the grave. The Sovereign stood stock still, her gaze locked on the exit Scorpius had taken, her expression unreadable. But then she turned her attention to John and he got a very bad feeling since her expression didn't change at all. "You are neither Peacekeeper nor Sebacean," she said, her voice calm and measured. "What are you?"

John didn't really know how to respond other than with the truth. "Human," he said, well aware that his own voice was a tad timid.

Her eyes narrowed. "Human?" she asked, to which he nodded curtly. "And where do Humans hail from?"

It was the interest that others showed in his home world that always made him a tad weary. "Earth," he replied.

"There are some essential ingredients missing from your blood. Ingredients that assure a Sebacean's survival. Also, I am told, there are some enzymes present that my scientists cannot make sense of. They say it seems almost possible that you are not susceptible to heat fluctuations. Is that so? Can you tolerate intense heat?"

John really wanted to steer her away from this topic, but had no idea how. "To a degree," he agreed.

"So, your people do not suffer from heat delirium then? They do not experience the living death?" she pressed on and took a step toward him.

"We get heat stroke, but it's usually reversible," he countered. "And no, no living death."

The Sovereign considered his words for a moment, then sighed. "Take him to the scientists. They'll want to study him further," she said and waved a dismissive hand at him.

The guards grabbed him, but he managed to shrug them off at first. "Wait. Please."

She had started to turn away, but stopped at his plea and looked back at him.

"I have ... a mate. Sebacean. I'll be happy to tell you or your scientists anything I can that might be of use, but I am not a guinea pig. I will not be treated like this." He tried to lend his voice some anger, but in his own ears he sounded feeble, scared, which he was.

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head lightly and waved at the guards. "Take him away," she repeated, turned her back and walked away.

The guards grabbed him again and again he shouldered his way out of their grip, which of course landed him in a world of hurt when one of them activated the collar.

***

**Eight solardays earlier**

With everything loaded on the pod, all Aeryn could do was sit down on a crate near it and wait. John's continuous interest in strange worlds sometimes baffled her. Sometimes it also worried her, but this system was off limits to Peacekeepers, which in and off itself should make them safe. So, today, she was not worried. She was merely bored.

After a while, the boredom changed to annoyance. She glanced up at the sky, noting the position of the sun, then rose and started pacing. The sun crept further toward the horizon and John's continued absence made her begin to worry. The fact that their com-badges didn't work made things a little tenser than they had to be, too.

Unsure of what to do, she decided to look up the market first, to see if he had gotten himself in trouble there or was lost in the merchandise or something like that. With John, she could never know what he might get involved in. "Drannit," she muttered, sealed the pod and strode back into the town in search of her wayward Human.

After trailing through the market place a few times, she figured he was either back at the pod by now or had gone elsewhere. At this point in time, she was still annoyed, although the first faint stirrings of worry were rising in her.

The return to the pod did nothing. There was no sign of him anywhere and by that time, the sun had reached the horizon. Not sure where to start, she returned to the market place again and by the time she got there, it was dark and the square was now empty apart from a few stragglers still packing up their stands.

Asking anyone if they had seen him would be complicated, because he didn't exactly look special. "Frell," she muttered, looking around while slowly turning in a circle.

"Lost something?"

That grating old voice startled her and she turned abruptly around to face the old female standing there, leaning on a cane. "As a matter of fact, yes," Aeryn agreed. "My ... mate," she added. Technically they weren't mated, but that was beside the point. "He went to this market earlier and never came back."

"Must have gotten lost then, eh?" the old woman said, cackled and hoppled off.

Aeryn frowned. It was possible. Although he had improved considerably in later cycles, he had even gotten lost on Moya in the beginning. Frell, it had taken him precious time to learn how to open doors. The option that he was lost, wandering around this town in search of a way back to the landing pads was very much a possibility.

Over the next two solardays, Aeryn trailed through this quaint little town over and over again, searching methodically for John and finding nothing. She asked a few shop owners, but they shrugged and went about their business. Unsure of how to handle this situation, she returned to Moya to fill in Pilot, D'Argo and Chiana, then returned to the surface to search some more.

It was completely by chance that she came across a square that had no statue - something she only reflected on because a few males were standing around, discussing if the broken statue was salvageable and if not, what else they could place there. One of the men - he looked to be a soldier of some sort - huffed with annoyance. "Frelling offworlders," he stated in a morose tone of voice. "They have no respect for other people's property."

"Agreed," one of the workers said. "Good thing he wasn't a Peacekeeper, though, wasn't it?"

Aeryn frowned and trailed closer. The soldier noticed her and eyed her up and down. "Hear something good?" he asked, his tone stand-offish.

"An offworlder destroyed this statue?" she asked and eyed the pedestal with more interest than she felt.

The soldier considered her for a microt, then shrugged. "Yes. The Sovereign is not pleased," he agreed. "Why so curious?"

Aeryn grimaced and took a step back. "Just concerned for our fair city," she said, doing her best to look disgusted. "Offworlders should stay off world," she added, gave the soldier a nod and started walking again. She only relaxed when she was out of sight and none of them had tried to stop her. "Frell it, John," she muttered under her breath.

Four days of futile searching and now this? That drannit had gotten himself arrested for destroying city property? While she trailed in the direction of the palace, she considered the situation. John was a lot of things, but clumsy was usually not one of them. If he had destroyed a statue, there was a good reason for it. But Aeryn was very much aware that she could not just waltz into the palace and demand to have him back. She would need to find out what the protocol was for having a prisoner released from a sentence for that specific offence.

Lost in contemplation, she rounded a corner and nearly ran into someone. Stopping dead, she stared in pure surprise at Scorpius. "What the frell?" she snapped, took a hurried step back, ripped her pulse pistol out and aimed it at his head.

The platoon of Peacekeepers following behind him had come to a stop too and every single one of them pulled their weapons on her as well, Braca included.

Scorpius stared at her for a microt, then raised a hand. "Put away your weapons," he ordered and the soldiers complied immediately. "Officer Sun. What a surprise," he then said.

Aeryn stared at him, not sure how to interpret his reaction right now. "Likewise," she countered and eased out of her defensive stance, but did not lower her weapon. "I thought Peacekeepers were banned from this system," she added.

The look that crossed the half-breed's face revealed anger and disappointment. "Yes," he agreed. "And we have been ordered off world within the arn."

"Well, you'd better hurry then," Aeryn said.

"I assume you are looking for John," Scorpius countered evenly. "He appears to be imprisoned for some minor offence."

"I know," Aeryn lied. Technically she hadn't known, but Scorpius had just confirmed her suspicion.

"Are you going to bargain for his release?" Scorpius took a cautious step closer, obviously testing her boundaries.

"What the frell do you care what I do?" she countered standoffishly.

"For some time now, I have attempted to make contact with John," Scorpius said and shifted another step closer.

Aeryn raised her pistol a little. "Stay back," she warned him and took a step back to widen the distance again.

The half-breed raised both hands. "I mean no harm," he said.

"You have attempted to make contact, you say?" she prompted and couldn't help a snide grin. "Seems to me that you're trying very hard to capture him. After what you've done to him, Scorpius, you cannot blame the man for running when he sees you coming."

"It is unfortunate that he does not trust me," Scorpius lamented. "But it is very important that I speak with him, and his continued evasion makes it very difficult for me to relay this to him."

"You could just send him a message," Aeryn countered tersely. "What the frell do you want with him now? The majority of the Peacekeepers couldn't care less about what he does, as long as he stays out of their business. And he has every intention of doing that. You are the only one hunting him now."

"I am not 'hunting' him," Scorpius said, his tone a tad irritated now. "I merely wish to speak with him."

"Fine. I'll let him know once I get him released," Aeryn said, still aiming her pistol at him.

"And therein lies the problem, Officer Sun," Scorpius said a little sadly. "I do know a little more about the Sovereign than you might. And I can assure you that she is not going to give John up willingly."

The fact that Scorpius might have information that could help her made her waver. But trusting the half-breed was not high on her to-do list. "What possible interest could she have in him?"

"The same that everybody else seems to have. He is like a Sebacean, but not. He has attributes that Sebaceans could use," Scorpius said, his tone conspiratorial now. "Perhaps we should sit down somewhere and talk about it?"

"And perhaps not," Aeryn countered. "I believe you have been given an ultimatum? It might be in your best interest to keep that. If I remember correctly, the treaty with this system is very much in the Sovereign's favor."

The look in Scorpius' eyes darkened. "That is, regretfully, true." He considered something for a moment. "We shall remain just outside the borders of this system. If you feel you need help in having John released, we will be standing by."

"Thank you for offering," Aeryn said with a sneer. "I think I can handle it."

Scorpius gave her a nod, then proceeded onward, followed by Braca and his platoon of Peacekeepers.

For a long moment, Aeryn remained where she was, pistol drawn, and waited for them to come back to arrest her. When they didn't, she holstered her pulse pistol again and gave a passerby a nasty look when he eyed her suspiciously. Then she slumped back against the wall and considered this meeting. If Scorpius hadn't been lying, John could be in a worse fix than she had thought. She needed intel, and soon. Usually, bars were a good place to start, so instead of heading on toward the palace, she decided to check out the local establishments to find someone who might be willing to talk.

***

**In the palace**

No matter how much he fought them, he had no way of ignoring the paralyzing pain the collar bestowed on him. While the collar was active, he was pretty much out of commission. And when they finally turned it off again, he was in no position to fight back any more. The fatigue was only part of it, though. The rest was the fact that he was now strapped to a steel table in what looked like a lab.

He spent a few minutes gasping for breath after the collar turned off, but even though he was so worn out that he was one step away from passing out, he stayed wide awake and as alert as his present condition allowed for. Because not only was he strapped to a t-shaped table, arms stretched out to both sides, he was also butt naked. Fortunately, they had covered him with a sheet, but that did not downplay the embarrassment of being laid out like this in front of complete strangers.

His concerns about his own nakedness took a backseat to what exactly they had in mind, though, and it didn't take very long before that was the least of his concerns. The first thing they did was inject something into his jaw. Before he could even consider an outburst, he felt his jaw muscles tighten and realized he couldn't open his mouth. The second injection they administered was right into his larynx and that one hurt like a bitch. But what sounds he managed to make were garbled and after a moment, not even that came out. They had effectively gagged him and prevented him from opening his mouth and that seriously freaked him out. But he couldn't move. The ties that kept him in place were strategically placed around wrists, upper arms, ankles and upper thighs and one across his chest. He was effectively out of commission and they obviously wanted him to be awake to witness whatever they had in mind.

To say that he was terrified at this point would be the understatement of the year. He knew he would have been begging for their damned mercy if he could have by now and it both frustrated and scared him that he couldn't. All he could do was breath rapidly through his nose and hope he passed out before they did something unspeakable to him.

What really got under his skin was the fact that they ignored him and spoke about him like he would imagine human scientists would speak about a lab rat. There was no compassion, no concern about hurting him; just their work and what they hoped to gain from it.

At first, all they did was take blood samples and tissue samples. The latter was a tad painful because they cut a small piece of his skin off without sedating him, but that he could live with. They covered the cut with some sort of liquid that solidified and technically became a band aid, which made it obvious that they cared enough to make sure he did not get an infection.

One of the scientists - he had decided that was what they were ahead of doctors - picked up a gadget that was about the length of her lower arm and pressed one end of it against his stomach. She pressed down on the trigger at the top of it and he basically felt like she had driven a half inch steel rod through his guts. Without sound or the ability to move, his display of agony was pathetic at best, but that didn't mean it hurt any less.

How long these tests went on for was beyond him, but it felt like days. They kept coming back for more, kept drawing blood, kept taking samples. The only plus was that he was hooked up to what he figured was a nutrition drip, because he felt neither hunger nor thirst throughout this. What he did feel was the stinging pain of every incision, every injection, every cut and scarp and he was beginning to pray mentally. He was praying for Aeryn to find him, to figure out what had happened to him, because he knew she would be kicking ass and taking names to get to him. And D'Argo and Chiana would be equally ready to come to his rescue.

After this particular brand of torture had gone on for far too long, they left him alone for a while and he was beginning to hope that this was the end of this demeaning experience, but then they all filed into the lab again and by their actions alone he could tell that they were far from done.

"Technically, the samples we have already taken should give us enough to go on," the male said. They all wore surgical masks, obscuring their faces, but since this was the only man among them, John had already dubbed him Kevorkian in his mind. Kevorkian drew down a transparent section of the ceiling in the same shape as the table John was strapped to and activated it. It appeared to work like an x-ray, only it displayed a live feed of his internal organs.

All three of them stepped up to eye the readouts. "What's that?" one of the females asked, pointing at John's liver. "Is that a parapheral nerve?"

Kevorkian shook his head. "The location is wrong. It can't be," he said and his brow furrowed. "And this?" he asked in turn, pointing to John's kidneys. "What are those supposed to be? There are two of them. I wonder what their function is."

"Well, this at least we can identify. Heart, lungs," the second female said, waving indistinctly at his upper body. "Intestines. Stomach," she added. "As for the rest ... I wouldn't know."

Kevorkian sighed. "Well, that leaves only one option."

John swallowed convulsively. Was this the point where that freak decided to cut him open to find out what made him tick?

"We have to map their functions," one of the females agreed with a nod. "Will you do the honors?" she then asked the second female.

"Certainly," she agreed and glanced at Kevorkian. "Could you get the keevar-lines?"

Kevorkian left and the two women withdrew to the rear of the room to pick up something that looked like a rolled up length of metal plating. It wasn't very wide and was about fourteen inches long when they unrolled it. One of them pushed the sheet away a bit and together they plastered this metal sheet along the side of his body, reaching from armpit to hip. It was cold and made him hiss, but neither of them paid him any attention.

The length of metal stuck to his skin and, not knowing what it was for, he imagined the worst. Kevorkian stepped back into the room holding a long, narrow box, which they put down on a table at the rear. The female asked to do 'the honors' donned a pair of heavy-duty gloves, opened the box and withdrew what to John look liked a smallish metal plate with an about forty inch long hair attached to it. Only the hair was moving, writhing around like a snake.

She held on to the metal plate with one hand while holding onto the front end of the hair with the other and the tip of this 'hair' continuously tried to burrow through her glove into her hand. She guided it over to the metal sheet now stuck to his body and the 'hair' lost interest in her and instead attacked the plate, which appeared to have holes in it, because this thing, whatever the hell it was, stabbed through and dug into his armpit. And it generally felt like someone was inserting a long needle into his body; a needle that wiggled and penetrated things that were not meant to be penetrated, and no matter how he tried to squirm and twist, he couldn't move enough to get away from this violation, and it hurt. It burned and it upset everything it touched and they were far from done, because she went back for another one and another one, inserting them along the side of his body and letting these things wiggle through him and the sensation alone was pushing him to the brink. That it hurt on top of that made it that much harder to bear. That he was incapable of voicing his pain ... that one nearly broke him.

***

Aeryn spent a full day trying to get the information she needed and ended up with nothing. None of the good citizens she tried to talk to wanted to have anything to do with her the microt she mentioned the Sovereign. Angry at this failure, she decided to try the direct approach. In other words, she strode up the palace gates and demanded an audience with the Sovereign.

The guard eyed her questioningly, then shrugged and relayed the request to the palace itself. Within microts she was allowed in and she felt like shooting someone out of sheer aggression. She was aware, though, that she needed to keep a lid on her emotions right now.

By the time she was finally brought before the Sovereign, she had as good a grip on herself as she could have.

The Sovereign, busy with whatever Sovereigns did, looked up from a table strewn with flimsies, which covered much of the holo-display underneath. "You requested an audience?" she asked, her tone standoffish. "As you can see, I am rather busy. What can I do for you?"

Aeryn eyed the other woman, trying to gage her, but found it almost impossible to determine whether she was friend or foe. "My mate was arrested for accidentally damaging a statue," she said, cutting right to the bone.

Whatever had occupied the Sovereign seemed to take a backseat, because her attention was now fully on Aeryn. "Your mate?" she asked.

"Yes. If there would be any way I could reimburse you for the loss of this statue and have my mate back, I would be … grateful." Aeryn couldn't help wondering what she was getting herself into with an offer like that.

The Sovereign's expression was impossible to read. "That statue was a gift from a very dear friend of mine, long since passed away. A replacement would not be the same," she said. "I am afraid that your mate will have to serve out his time."

Most of all Aeryn wanted to lunge at the women, but refrained from showing any outward aggression. "And how long might that be?" she asked, making sure to keep her tone even and unemotional.

"However long I say it is," the Sovereign countered and lost interest again. She returned to her flimsies.

"Are we talking solardays, weekens, monans?" Aeryn pressed.

The Sovereign glanced at her. "At this point in time, it is impossible to say. It very much depends on his behavior," she said.

"May I see him?" Aeryn plowed on, hoping that she could at least reassure herself that he was not harmed.

The Sovereign picked up one of her flimsies and studied it. "No," she then said and gave Aeryn an annoyed look. "This audience is over."

The guards ushered Aeryn out of the throne room and she struggled to maintain a marginal grip on herself. Once outside the gates again, she came to a stop and stood there with her back to the palace. "Frell," she hissed, then strode on toward the landing pads. She needed intel on the palace, on where John might be held. But where could she come about something like that without raising suspicion and getting herself arrested?

She took the pod back to Moya and, seething, spent an arn just pacing around Command while forcefully ignoring her shipmates. Rygel was nowhere around, but Chiana and D'Argo both tried to reason with her with little luck.

"Perhaps we should just wait," D'Argo suggested.

"Fell that. You can't leave him in the hands of some frelled Sovereign. He's likely to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get into even more trouble," Chiana countered angrily. "We need to find a way to break him out of there."

Aeryn stopped. "And how the frell do you suggest we do that? There are guards. And we are … no army," she growled and turned her attention to the holo-display, which showed the gentle hemisphere of the planet, other further-out worlds and, at the very edge, the command carrier. She stared at the display for a microt.

"I don't know," Chiana said, failing to notice what Aeryn was looking at.

But D'Argo had noticed. "You can't think of going to them for help, Aeryn," he said quietly.

Chiana glanced from one to the other, then noted the direction Aeryn was looking in. "Frell, no! He would never forgive you," she burst out.

"I have no other choice. If even half of what Scorpius hinted at is a reality, John is once again in over his head. And I am not standing by while they dissect him to find out what makes him tick," Aeryn said.

"You're tinked. Fahrbot. You can't …"

D'Argo stopped Chiana by clamping a hand over her mouth, his attention on Aeryn. "Scorpius will demand an outrageous price, Aeryn. You know that. He has been after John for cycles."

Aeryn smoothed both hands over her hair and closed her eyes for a moment. "I know," she finally said. "But what choice do I have?"

The Luxan sighed. "Yes," he muttered and released Chiana again. "What choice do you have?"

***

The smug smile on Scorpius' lips was almost enough to make Aeryn turn around and leave, but the thought of what that Sovereign might be doing to John made her stay where she was.

"Officer Sun," the half-breed said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Braca and a few soldiers stood by, but none of them seemed overtly agitated or on guard.

"I think you know why I'm here," Aeryn countered. "You offered your help and, as much as it pains me, I seem to be out of options unless I choose to wait for the Sovereign to release John."

This made Scorpius frown. "You cannot consider that, Officer Sun. If my intelligence report is correct - and I have no reason to believe it is not - they are harming him considerably already. We need to free him. The sooner the better," he said.

It was the fact that Scorpius seemed to believe they were in this together that made her bristle. "I agree," she said curtly. "But from what I understand you are persona non grata in that system. How can you possibly help?" she demanded.

"We can offer you extensive intelligence on how to find John and how to get him out. Fortunately, this Sovereign seems to believe that her system is impenetrable and security is therefore rather lax," he said and waved a hand toward the innards of the command carrier. Aeryn was not inclined to accommodate him on that, though, and she shook her head and remained where she was.

"Bring me what I need and we can discuss this further," she said and wondered if he would go for it.

Scorpius eyed her closely and she couldn't help wondering what he actually saw when he looked at others. He had been able to tell by merely seeing John that he was not Sebacean. And he was good at catching lies too. "You do not trust me," he lamented quietly.

"No," she agreed. There was no sense in lying to him about it. Aeryn had always been in favor of the straight forward approach. "I do not. And if I had another option, even a remote one, I would take it. But unfortunately I believe, as you do, that John is in danger, and I want him out of there now. I do not want to wait for a possible release."

"A wise decision," Scorpius commended her. "Alright then. We will bring the information to you."

Aeryn nodded her agreement and remained where she was while one of Scorpius' advisors took off to retrieve the information needed.

"I suggest you go in alone, though. Your Luxan and Nebari friends may only serve to hamper your attempts to free John," Scorpius suggested.

"I wasn't going to get them involved," Aeryn countered and gave the half-breed the once-over. "So, what exactly do you hope to gain from this cooperation?"

The half-Scarran glanced at Braca, who was watching and listening, then placed a hand on Aeryn's shoulder and guided her away from the soldiers and out of earshot. "Merely to talk to him," he said. "And we of course offer medical assistance should he need it."

Aeryn almost smiled at that suggestion, but it would have been a very unbecoming one of its kind. "You expect me to bring John here? To your command carrier?"

"Oh no. I offer to meet you at the landing pads. I do believe we can go that far as long as we do not venture into the city itself. We shall take care of him, restore his health if necessary, and he and I can talk. After that, depending on John's decision, he is free to leave."

Aeryn stared at him for a microt while her mind was working overtime on how to get around this. There was really only one option and she wasn't overtly keen on it. But right now she saw no other solution to this problem. "I cannot make that decision for him, Scorpius. I do not trust you, but his ... lack of trust in you goes a lot deeper. If he is injured and I hand him over to you, he will never forgive me."

Scorpius nodded. "I assumed as much," he confessed. "We shall leave that decision up to him then, shall we?"

She contemplated it for a moment longer, then nodded once and made no further commitments.

***

Night time on the main planet was not exactly the most exciting time, Aeryn mused, as she made her way through deserted streets. It appeared that nobody was out after dark, which made her wonder what that was all about. Superstition? Something real? "I don't frelling care," she muttered under her breath and glanced down at the map Scorpius had provided her with. All the streets were well lit and with nobody around to hamper her passage, she made good speed and soon found herself on the far side of the palace wall.

She inspected the high wall stretching off in both directions and wondered why the frell there were no guards on top of it. She had seen no indication of electronic surveillance either and Scorpius' intel confirmed that. This Sovereign had a lot of faith in her own invulnerability, it seemed. Or maybe she had a lot of faith in her subjects. It had been impossible for Aeryn to find anyone who had a grudge against the female or disliked her enough to divulge information.

"Frell this," she muttered and lowered her visual inspection to the lower part of the wall. According to the map she held, there should be an entrance somewhere in this area. She pushed her way through dense foliage growing close to the wall and eventually found a small side entrance hidden behind vines and tree branches. Using the torch she had brought for the same purpose, she welded through the lock and then carefully pushed the gate open. Any microt now, she expected to hear a siren wailing or see the palace guards come running, but nothing happened. "Lax security," she growled and stepped through.

Once inside the walls, she pulled the gate shut behind her, but made sure it wouldn't stick at an inopportune moment, then looked around for the next access point, which turned out to be right across from where she had come through; a set of stairs leading down into the bowls of the palace.

Before moving across the open expanse between the wall and the palace, she waited for a while to see if her luck held, but still there were no alarms, no sign of anyone coming toward her position, and eventually she hurried across and down the stairs. The door that met her was not sturdy and she again wondered about the lax security. This was definitely not Peacekeeper territory. Using the torch again, she melted the lock and pushed the door inward. It opened up into a dark corridor going straight in.

When the door shut behind her, the darkness was complete and she stood for a moment to see if her eyes would get used to the darkness. When that didn't happen, she unclipped a small hand-held lamp and switched it on. The corridor, like the palace above her, seemed to have been burned out of a solid piece of rock. She started moving, keeping to the middle of the corridor while holding the lamp up high. It was peculiar how her hearing was affected by the darkness surrounding her. She constantly thought she could hear people moving just out of view. "Frell," she muttered, but kept moving forward until the darkness ahead became a little less compact and then began to fade to grey as she neared areas in use.

She switched the lamp off and hooked it back onto her belt before rounding the first corner she had come across in this corridor. It opened up into a main corridor and Aeryn pulled back behind the corner again when she identified the sounds she had heard before. Obviously sound traveled through the corridor, but now she saw those making those sounds. Three white-clad individuals stepped out of one of the rooms, one of them pulling off the viral filter over her mouth and nose.

"All we can do now is wait," she said.

The others followed suit by pulling off their filters as well. "Yes, considering that this is an unknown species, it will probably take all night," the male said. "Well, it's not like he's going anywhere, so we can just get some well-deserved sleep and report our findings to the Sovereign in the morning."

They all walked away in the opposite direction of where Aeryn was hiding and she only moved again when she heard a door slid shut further on, which cut off their voices.

Slowly, she edged back around the corner and inspected this new corridor stretching out in front of her. It was twice as wide as the one she had come in through and lit in muted light; and there was no indication of surveillance anywhere.

She held up the map and realized that the room Scorpius thought John was in, was the one those three had just left. Aeryn lingered for a moment, listening to the quiet basement. The only thing she could hear was a faint hum of machinery and that was it. "This is far too easy," she muttered, but pushed on anyway.

She reached the door and pushed the release. It whooshed into the wall and after one more look around the corridor, she stepped inside.

The sound of machinery was louder inside. She focused on the t-table and its unwilling occupant and stopped dead. He was strapped down, eyes closed, his skin waxen, his breath hitching in and out. But that was all the sound he made, which made no real sense to her. From the tenseness of his body alone she would have assumed that he'd be screaming or at least moaning and this complete silence unnerved her.

She reached out to touch his shin, which instantly brought his head up. His eyes widened, his breath quickened, but still he said nothing. It wasn't until she realized he was straining to move his jaw with no luck that she knew they had gagged him chemically. "Frell," she hissed. "Hang on. Let me just …" She trailed off, looking for the right injector and found it after rooting around on the tables. From what she remembered, chemical gagging involved two injections and two further to undo the gag again.

With the two injectors in hand, she turned back to the table and only then realized that there was something stuck to his side. She stared at the metal plating for a moment. "What the frell are they doing to you?" she asked, well aware that he could not answer her right now.

She returned to his side, pressed the first injector against the side of his jaw and pressed the trigger. It took a microt before it worked, but finally he opened his mouth and flexed his jaw. "This one will sting," she said and pressed the second injector against his larynx. He jerked when she pulled the trigger, then made a raspy kind of sound. In the process, she had placed a hand on his chest and felt the constant tremor rippling through him. She gently stroked his throat, hoping to speed up the process that would give him back his voice, then turned her attention to the metal plating along his side. "Do you know what this is?" she asked.

"Keevar," he rasped, his voice so strained she feared he would snap something just trying to speak.

The implications of what he had said, though, made her blood run colder than normal. She inspected the plating more closely and noted the wiggling ends of keevar-lines sticking out of each of the smaller plates. "Frell this," she growled and briefly looked around for gloves that would make the removal of this abomination safer for her.

"Get them … out. Can … feel them … moving," he rasped. "Aw god, please."

"I will. You just have to be quiet. We don't want to alert anyone," she said, pulled the gloves on and took a hold of the first plate. He tensed up when she pulled at it and she only barely managed to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop the scream threatening to erupt. "I'm going to have to force them out," she said quietly.

As she pulled on the first line, extracting it dench by dench from his body, she was glad she hadn't unstrapped him first. Even with the tight straps holding him down, he was trashing, fighting against the pull. "Frell this," she muttered and yanked her hand backward, extracting the frelling thing in one smooth go. Apparently removing them had to be done quickly. She tossed the first plate into a corner, where the keevar-line wiggled around on the floor, while she grabbed the next plate and yanked it out of him, praying quietly that she didn't damage anything in the process.

After extracting eight of these horrors from his body, Aeryn was about ready to shoot someone. She had only heard of the usage of this specific type of organ mapping and usually it meant the demise of the afflicted because the pain was unbearable and the risk that the keevar-lines at some point penetrated something vital was always present.

She carefully peeled her hand off his mouth and had to admire him for staying conscious throughout the extraction. Proceeding to unstrap his arms and his chest, she then removed the sheet to unstrap his legs as well and came to a complete standstill for a microt. "Stay down," she advised when he made an attempt at sitting up.

He laboriously raised his head and spotted what she was staring at. With a groan, he let his head drop back down on the table.

Catheters were not something normally used in the Peacekeeper regime, but Aeryn knew what it was and how to remove it. The question was just how he would respond to it. "Just hold still," she said, picked up a cloth and removed the catheter as quickly and as painlessly as she could. He let out a whimper, but she assumed he was just in so much discomfort that this just added insult to injury.

Then she picked up the sheet again after unstrapping his legs and helped him sit up. He slumped against her, trying to curl up on himself with little luck, and Aeryn realized right there and then that he was not walking out of here under his own power.

"We have to go. Now," she said, wrapped her arms around him and hauled him off the table. His knees buckled the microt his feet hit the floor, but Aeryn held on to him, keeping him up, and he in turn tried to do his best to hold onto her.

She wrapped the sheet around him and briefly considered the now awkward walk through town toward the landing pads where Scorpius and his soldiers were waiting. She grimaced lightly and noticed that John was taking a bit of his weight off her, which meant he'd found his balance. "I'm not even going to ask if you can walk," she said.

"I can walk out of here," he rasped, clinging desperately to her.

Although she had her doubts about that, she nodded nonetheless. "Of course you can," she agreed and guided him toward the door. It was slow going and she hoped that they would at least be outside the palace walls before someone raise the alarm, but she wasn't holding her breath for that one.

He seemed to gain more strength the further they walked and she attributed that to his very urgent need to get the frell out of here. She used the forward momentum this created to move them faster down the corridor, which fell back into blackness when they had gone about halfway. She didn't bother about the lamp. She had a good feel for the corridor now and knew approximately how far it was to the door.

When they reached it, Aeryn dared to hope they would make it. She was ready to shoot her way out if necessary; anything to prevent them from dragging him back to that room and those archaic methods they obviously used on prisoners. All the good things Aeryn had ever heard about this system were turning sour bit by bit.

She hauled the door open and they were hit by a chilly breeze. John shuddered and instinctively pulled back a step, which nearly upended him. Aeryn could barely keep a hold of him to stop him from falling backwards. "Frell, don't do that," she snapped and righted him again. "The faster we get out of here, the better for you. Focus, John."

He nodded weakly, but made no move to speak, and she hated it already. Everything was wrong when John didn't speak.

"Come on," she urged and pulled him out the door and up the stairs. She knew she should have closed the door behind them, but doing so would mean she would have to let go of him and there was just no way that he would remain standing if she released him. And if he fell, she wasn't entirely certain she would be able to get him back on his feet.

They made their way across the open area between the palace and the wall and she kicked the gate open before propelling them both through. This time she did pause to pull the gate shut behind her, not that it would make any difference if they were pursued. And still there was no sign of activity, no alarms, not guards. It worried her on some level, but she was not going to slow down to test if this was a trap.

Instead of heading back into town, she turned them the other way and urged him forward in the direction of the edge of town stretching away from the palace. She steered them up a slight incline towards a grassy area.

Once there, she let out a sharp whistle that made John flinch and right before them, Lo'La became visible and D'Argo came down the ramp to meet them.

"Oh, my friend," he groaned when he saw the condition John was in.

Together they got John into the ship and settled down. "Get us out of here," Aeryn said. "And use the cloaking device. We don't want to be spotted."

"I was going to do that anyway," D'Argo said patiently and settled in behind the controls.

John doubled over until Aeryn pushed him back up and strapped him in. "You'll be able to sleep soon," she promised. "You just need to stay with me for a moment, okay?"

He met her eyes and brought a shivering hand up to touch her face. "I knew you'd come," he rasped.

"Of course," she agreed and pressed her hand over his, steadying it a little. "I will always come for you," she added with a vague smile.

***

Aeryn's first inclination had been to get him to the med bay so she could run him through the scanner first and foremost, but he was so wasted, so tired, that when he begged to be taken to his bed instead, she relented. Whatever stamina he had built up during their escape was gone by the time they reached Moya, and D'Argo was forced to carry him to his bed.

Aeryn helped him get settled and then sat down on the edge of his bed. "Will you be alright?" she asked.

He gave her a pale smile. "Yeah. I just need to sleep this off," he said, already struggling to keep his eyes open.

"Then rest," she said, rose and turned around to face the other three. "Come on. Let's give him some peace," she added and shooed them all out.

They retired to the galley and D'Argo broke out the raslac. "So, what the frell now?" he asked.

Aeryn settled down across from him and accepted the offered cup. Chiana slid in beside D'Argo while Rygel remained at the end of the table. "Now we let him sleep and see how he feels when he wakes up again. Either way, we're leaving this system as fast as we can," she said and glanced over at the clamshell and the image of Pilot.

" _We are well under way_ ," Pilot agreed. " _Moya will do a series of starbursts to hopefully shake off any pursuers._ "

"Thank you, Pilot," Aeryn said and returned her attention to the others.

"You double-crossed Scorpius. How drad is that?" Chiana cooed, obviously impressed.

Aeryn shrugged. "In his present condition, John is in no position to make any decisions or, for that matter, defend himself. I was not going to let Scorpius anywhere near him. I just needed the information. It's not my fault that Scorpius thinks I'm still a Peacekeeper at heart," she said and couldn't help a vague smile.

D'Argo eyed her for a moment and then barked out a laugh. "And here I thought Peacekeepers couldn't change," he chuckled, then grew serious again. "But you do realize that you have incurred his wrath now, don't you?"

She grimaced. "Why should John have all the fun?" she countered. "Let's just stay the frell away from Peacekeeper territory for now."

"What about the deal you made with Scorpius?" D'Argo asked.

"I will mention it to John when he feels better. I won't have him run into Scorpius at some point and find out I kept this from him," Aeryn said, emptied her cup and set it down on the table. "I need some sleep," she added and rose. "The rest of you, stay away from John for now. Let him sleep."

That said, she left the galley again and headed back to her own quarters to catch up on her sleep. She hadn't slept much in the days that John had been missing.

***

When John woke up again, the first thing that struck him was this odd sense of vertigo despite lying down. He shifted a little and draped an arm over his face, grateful for the small things right now; namely the ability to move.

He felt heavy somehow, like something was weighing him down, but he could move his limbs freely. A little apprehensive on account of the vertigo, he pushed up on his elbows, testing the waters. It wasn't so bad. He was dizzy, but that could be because of dehydration. The nutrition drip he'd been on had been inadequate and, he realized, he was also hungry.

With an effort, he sat up, trying to sense his body, to figure out how it was all responding, and for now he seemed to be doing okay; not perfect, but okay. He pulled lead-heavy feet over the edge of the bed and pushed the sheet aside, then glanced down himself. First thing's first. He needed clothes. It took a try or two before he managed to get up and he leaned forward, grabbing his knees, to let the dizziness settle before he attempted to move further. He managed sweats and a t-shirt before he had to sit down again, and for a long moment he just considered going back to bed. But a call of nature would not be denied. Bathroom first, then food and water, he decided and struggled back to his feet again.

"Haven't felt this crappy since I had that bout of food poisoning when I was a kid," he muttered and cleared his throat. That injection that had paralyzed his vocal cords had wreaked havoc on his voice.

***

Aeryn, who's quarters were not that far from John's, had given up on sleeping and was instead cleaning her pulse pistol when she heard something that made her drop the weapon and rush out the door. She skittered into John's quarters and took in the fact that he wasn't in bed.

"John?" she called.

This was answered by a groan coming from the cleansing room. She strode over to the open door and came to a stop when she found him on his knees, one hand on the floor, the other on his crotch. For a microt she stared at him, trying to determine what had caused that sound of agony from him.

She took in his paleness and the sweat covering his face, and hunkered down next to him, slipping a hand onto the back of his neck. "What happened?"

He let out a grunt and glanced at her. "That catheter must have done more damage than I thought," he rasped, his voice strained and rough.

Aeryn glanced at the waste receptacle unit and grimaced. "Frell," she muttered. "Can you get up?"

He swallowed convulsively and tried, but gave up with a whimper. "No go," he pressed out through clenched teeth. "Just … give me a minute."

Aeryn rose, took a hold of his arm and hauled him to his feet, which drew a restrained groan from him.

"That was never a minute," he rasped and doubled over.

"D'Argo?" Aeryn called while helping John straighten up again. She hauled his arm over her shoulder and managed to get him all the way back into his cell before he pulled to a stop.

"Stop, stop," he gasped, trying to double up again. "I can't."

"We need to figure out how bad it is, John," she insisted, but did not force him to walk any further. "D'Argo?" she yelled again.

"I'm coming," she heard the Luxan reply and a moment later he turned up in the doorway.

"We need to get him to the med bay. He can't walk," she said, inclining her head toward John.

Ignoring John's feeble objections, D'Argo picked him up and carried him to the med bay, depositing him on the scanner bed. "Have you lost weight?" he asked when he released John. "You feel lighter."

John just groaned in reply and Aeryn assumed it was equal parts embarrassment and agony. "Thank you," she said to D'Argo, then turned to John. "You need to stretch out."

He shook his head. "Nope, can't do that," he rasped.

"Yes, you can. Just do it slowly," she disagreed. With a bit of coxing, she managed to get him to lie flat on his back so she could run the scanner over him and figure out what the frell these fekkiks had done to him.

Once she had finished scanning him, she turned to the display and inspected the indicated injuries.

"How bad is it?" John asked and shifted painfully onto his side.

She shook her head lightly. "Not too bad. There are some ... tears," she said, "which would explain the pain. It will heal."

He grunted out something that sounded a bit like a laugh. "Only it'll hurt like a bitch until then, right?" he rasped, turned his head and pressed his brow against the edge of the scanner bed. "I have just about had enough pain to last me a lifetime here."

She continued eying the display, seeing the indicated paths the keevar-lines had dug through him. None of it was fatal in its own right, but there was no doubt that some of this had the potential to cause severe pain. "Pilot, is there anything I can give him that will reduce the pain?" she asked, turning her attention to the clamshell.

" _There is. And, from what I know, there are still plenty of Zhaan's remedies left. You need to mix them, though_ ," Pilot replied.

Aeryn eyed the ingredients list scrolling over the screen. "That can't be too difficult," she muttered and went in search of what she needed. She mixed the dried herbs together, ground them to dust, then poured hot water over it and stirred. The smell of the concoction was a bit heady. She frowned, then turned back and handed it to John. "Drink this," she said.

He raised his head and eyed the cup. "What? Now you're feeding me tea? I didn't know I was that far out," he rasped and tried a wan smile.

"Just shut up and drink it. It will make you feel better," she countered evenly.

He pushed up in a sitting position, took the cup and sniffed at the contents. Then he arched an eyebrow and took a sip of it. "Not bad," he muttered and downed the rest in one go.

Aeryn watched him closely, briefly allowing the concern that she might have used wrongly labeled herbs to cross her mind, but pushed that thought away again.

"I don't feel anything," John said after a moment and focused on her. Then his eyes widened a little. "Nothing," he said and carefully pulled his legs over the edge of the scanner bed. "At all," he added.

"Just take it slow, John. Even though you may not feel anything now, you will when it wears off," she admonished him and helped him get off the scanner bed. Although he might not be in pain right now, he was still far from back to his old self.

"You gotta make some more of that stuff," he said, while leaning heavily on her.

"I will. And you need to rest and revitalize," she countered, then glanced at D'Argo who had remained silent throughout the whole thing.

"I'll take him back to his quarters," the Luxan said willingly.

"I'm injured, not deaf," John inserted and gave D'Argo a dark look.

"I'm sorry, my friend," D'Argo countered with a smile, which was then replaced by a look of concern. "Should you walk? I mean … as Aeryn said, you might not be in pain right now, but you will most likely be again when the tea wears off."

John considered it for a moment, then grimaced. "Fine. But this is the last time you carry me around like this," he warned.

D'Argo rolled his eyes and shook his head lightly. "With your track record, I can make no promises of that kind," he said.

"Ah, frell this," Aeryn said, opened one of the many supply cabinets and pulled a hover stretcher out. She switched it on and watched with satisfaction while it rose into the air and stopped at hip-height. "You don't want to be carried? Well, you're not walking. So get on this and stop being such a frelling infant," she said.

John stared at the stretcher for a moment, then focused on her. "And we had this the whole time?" he asked.

"Every leviathan - frell, every Peacekeeper vessel has hover-stretchers," she countered and pushed the stretcher over to him. "Get on," she added.

He looked skeptical, but finally sighed and hoisted himself up on the stretcher with D'Argo's help. "You should probably lie down," the Luxan suggested. "Hover-stretchers are notoriously unstable if you're sitting up."

With an annoyed expression on his face, John stretched out on it. "That better?" he asked.

"That will do fine," Aeryn said with a smile. "I think I can handle him from here," she added to D'Argo, who nodded and remained behind when Aeryn pushed the stretcher out of the med bay.

"I feel much better," John complained.

"Yes, and in a couple of arns, you'll feel much worse if you overdo it," she countered. "Stop being such a brat."

He shifted his head and glared up at her. "Stop using words you don't understand," he shot back.

"I know what a brat is, you drannit," she said with a snide grin. "Just stay down and enjoy the ride."

***

As suspected, the pain John had suffered from earlier came back after a few hours and he was suddenly glad that he had allowed Aeryn to bully him into staying in bed. The worst would still be the damage that frigging catheter had left behind and it would probably take a few days before that cleared up enough that he wouldn't want to shoot himself before using the head.

"Shit," he groaned and shifted uncomfortably. The effects of the tea were slowly wearing off now and with every moment it seemed, his discomfort rose a notch. Not wanting to be a pain in anyone's neck, especially not after Aeryn had risked everything by coming to get him, he dragged it out and eventually had trouble drawing a decent breath without feeling that stabbing pain from his groin. The rest of his aches and pains paled in comparison. No amount of shifting around took the brunt off the pain and he found himself clawing his fingers into the covers to keep from voicing this particular pain.

"Looks like you need another shot." Aeryn's voice was sweet music to his ears and he sent her a hopeful look.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and held the mug out to him. He grabbed it and downed the contents in one go, ignoring the heat of the liquid. Then he slumped back on the bed and closed his eyes, waiting for the promised relief. When it finally came, it came all at once. In one heartbeat, the pain was gone and he exhaled deeply.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

He opened his eyes and nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "Guess I should stay horizontal for the time being, huh?"

"That might be a good idea," she agreed and eyed him closely. "How do you feel in general?"

"Fine, I guess," he said and finally allowed himself to think about this latest ordeal. "I'm disaster prone," he added. "Aren't I?"

"I don't know what the frell this is, John," she admitted. "We seem incapable of avoiding Scorpius and I would really like to know why. With the neural tracer chip gone, there is no frelling way he can track you. So how does he do it?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But Scorpy and his uncanny sense of homing isn't exactly the first thing that springs to mind here. That ... Sovereign ... she kicked him out, told him that PKs aren't welcome in that system. And for a moment there I thought she was actually helping me. I should know better by now."

She took his hand, squeezing it lightly. "You do seem to have an uncanny ability to run into people who want to exploit you for being unique," she agreed.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm not gonna set foot on another planet for a while here," he added. "I am fed up with running away all the time." He propped an arm behind his head and stared up at the ceiling for a moment while meshing his fingers with hers. "How did you get in there without them seeing you?"

Aeryn's grip briefly tightened and he glanced at her, noting an expression he didn't really like on her face.

"Aer?"

She pursed her lips, her attention on something above him. Then she looked down, meeting his eyes. "I got the information from Scorpius," she said.

All he could think of doing was to stare at her. "Come again?" he asked.

She looked uncomfortable. "I was on my way to the palace after I figured out that you had been arrested. And I ran into him. And Braca. He offered his help, but I obviously refused him," she said. "They left and I was left with no options. I tried talking to the Sovereign, but she would not even consider compensation, much less your release. At the time I did not know how bad it was, but I felt the definite urge to get to you as fast as possible. My only option was to go to Scorpius, make a deal with him and then … frell him over." At this, she shrugged lightly, her eyes now on their meshed fingers.

John blinked. "Say what?" he asked, a little stunned. "You shafted him?"

She grimaced at his choice of words. "In a manner of speaking. He risked a lot, to be honest. He gave me your location - don't ask me where he got that from - and they were waiting at the landing pads. In case you needed medical attention, he said," she explained. "Only, I arranged with D'Argo to pick us up on the other side of the palace in Lo'La, cloaked obviously. And the rest you know."

"Do you know how many ways that could have gone wrong?" he asked, still too surprised to respond in any meaningful way.

Aeryn smirked. "It was my plan, not yours. How could it go wrong?" she countered.

"Oh, ha-ha," he grumbled and tightened his grip on her hand for a moment. "What did he want from me? Did he say? The same old crap?"

Aeryn rubbed the back of her neck with a thoughtful expression. "He says he just wants to talk to you. Obviously I do not believe him, but I did make a deal with him that he would get to talk to you," she said and met his eyes again. "Not that I plan on honoring that deal."

"So, he's been hunting me all over the UTs like a rat in a frigging maze and all he wants is to talk to me?" he mused. "Has that guy ever heard of sending a message?"

"I don't know, John. It all seemed a little too convoluted, to be honest. I asked him the same question, but he never really replied to it," she said.

"I'm fed up with this, with him hunting me all over the place, with everybody wanting a piece of me. What the hell do I have to do to get out from under this?" he lamented.

"I don't know. And talking to him is not an option, John," she said.

Tiredly, he scrubbed a hand over his face. "I know. He wants to crack my skull open and find the wormhole tech. He wants to shaft the universe with it because he has daddy-issues," he said quietly.

"Of course he does," she agreed and leaned down to pick up the mug. "I read up on this concoction. It looks like it promotes healing as much as it stems pain. I should make some more of it."

John tightened his grip on her hand, preventing her from rising. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"

This made her smile. "Just about all the time," she countered and then her smile turned a little sad. "I love you too."

"And look at you, mixing medicine, fixing machines, keeping us all together. In all this crap, I still don't get what I did to deserve you," he said.

"As far as I recall, I was not given to you," she countered and smirked when he opened his mouth to object. "Just get some rest, you drannit," she added, rose and left the cell before he could think of anything appropriate to say.

"Good advice," he muttered and closed his eyes again.

***

It took precious time for John to get back on his feet, but he healed with the aide of the concoctions Aeryn came up with.

A few solardays after he had finally reached a point where he seemed as comfortable as he could get, Aeryn had to go in search of him, because he had disappeared and refused to answer the coms.

She found him in the training bay, sitting on a crate that contained various training tools, elbows on thighs, while he stared at the sparring dummy. "Did you hear me calling?" she asked.

He blinked, frowned lightly and finally looked at her. "What?"

He wasn't wearing a com-badge, which was obviously why he hadn't answered it. "I said, did you hear me calling you?"

He shook his head. "No." He sat up straight and flinched briefly. "What's up?"

"I was just wondering where you were," she countered and stepped closer. "Are you alright?"

"If being a trouble magnet is alright, then I guess so," he said. "I'm fed up with this, Aeryn."

"With what?" she asked and stopped next to him.

"The running. The ... fear," he said and leaned forward a bit, propping his elbows on his thighs again while he started picking at one thumb nail. "I'm fed up with being hunted all the time. I'm tired of feeling that I can't go anywhere without that wraith turning up to try and suck the life out of me." He snorted, a halfhearted attempt at a smile curling his lips. "I feel haunted."

Aeryn hunkered down and put a hand on his knee. "There must be a reason for that he can track you, John. Every frelling time we set down somewhere, he or his soldiers turn up. In my opinion, that means that there's either something on Moya or something in you that he can track."

He swallowed, his expression tensing. "Seems like the chip wasn't the only hardware he's dumped in me," he muttered and dropped his eyes to the floor between his feet. "Question is, how do we find it?"

"We can try the bio-scanner. It might be organic, but if it is a foreign object in your body, there should be a way to find it," she tried.

He smirked joylessly. "What if it's in my head? What if he made sure it can't be removed?"

"Ask Harvey," she suggested.

He focused on her, searching for the ridicule without finding it. "I'd rather not. He can't be trusted any more than Scorpy can."

" _I find that offensive_ ," Harvey commented.

John glanced up at the wraith living inside his mind. "That's another thing I want gone," he said and sighed deeply.

Aeryn glanced at the empty spot too. It had taken her some time to get used to the idea that he would spontaneously converse with empty space, but she had no doubt that what he saw was there. It was a manifestation of the neural bleed and she admired him for not having lost his mind because of it. When he dropped his head forward, she slipped a hand onto the back of his neck. "Let's try the scanner. If that does not pay off, there are other options."

***

In part John was apprehensive about the scanner. He was scared stiff of realizing there was another chip in his brain or something similar. But at the same time it would explain a lot. He stretched out on the scanner bed, mulling over that he spent way too much time on his back, and held still while Aeryn ran the scanner over him.

She studied the display for a moment. He sat up and eyed it too, not entirely sure what he was looking for. "You see anything?" he asked.

"What's that?" she asked and pointed toward his right hip.

He narrowed his eyes a little and leaned closer. "I don't know," he confessed. "Could that be it?"

Aeryn pursed her lips. "It could be," she said and turned her attention to him.

He got off the scanner bed and slipped a finger down between the lining of his pants and his right hip, feeling for anything that shouldn't be there. He couldn't immediately locate anything, though. "There's nothing there," he muttered.

Aeryn grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away, then replaced his finger with her own. She pressed into the flesh a little harder than he had and suddenly stopped moving. "There," she said. "It's pretty deep."

He glanced up at the display, then back down at her hand. "I don't care how deep it is. I want it gone," he said, his tone a bit jittery.

"Fine. I'll remove it. But it will hurt," she said. "Drop your pants."

He smirked lightly. "That's kinda hot," he said.

"Save it for later, John," she warned.

She dug out a gadget he hadn't seen before and grabbed a cloth as well. Then she grabbed a canister and held it out to him. "I made more of that tea," she said. "It should dull the pain."

He nodded, popped the lid off the canister and took a swig. "Dig in," he said and braced himself against the edge of the scanner bed.

The gadget she had dug out was a laser-cutter. It minimized bleeding and the tea took the top off the pain, but he still had a hard time holding still. She cut a narrow gash into his skin, then grabbed a pair of pliers before looking up at him. "Are you ready for this?"

"Not even close," he admitted through gritted teeth. "Just ... do it."

She nodded once, inserted the pliers and pulled whatever was hiding under his skin out. She dumped it in a tray, then switched something on the laser-cutter and used it to seal the wound. Then she sprayed that liquid band-aide stuff on and straightened up. "There," she said and turned her attention to the tray. "A tracer," she added.

John gingerly rubbed his now sore hip, his attention on the pen-thick dull grey tube. "A tracer?" he asked. "I do not remember how it got there."

"You did not remember the neural tracer chip either, John," she reminded him. "This might have happened at the same time."

"Great," he muttered and pulled his pants up again. "I'm a walking beacon. No wonder that freak keeps finding me."

"Yes, no wonder," Aeryn agreed, put the tray down and picked up the laser-cutter again. She glanced at him, then used the cutter to turn the tracer into ash.

"That should piss him off," John said with satisfaction.

"And you're injured again," she amended.

"This?" he asked, rubbing his palm over the decidedly sore spot. "That's nothing. I've had worse," he claimed.

"Yes, you have," she agreed. "So, now that Scorpius can't track you any more, perhaps you want to go on a food supply run with me?"

The idea of setting foot on another planet sent a shudder through him and the fun bled out of the situation instantly. "Not yet, Aeryn," he said with a light shake of the head.

"The best way to get over this is to jump right back into it, John," she insisted.

"It's too early," he disagreed.

For a moment he thought she would insist or maybe even force him, but then she shrugged lightly. "You decide when it's time," she said. "Do you need a hand?"

"No, I'm good," he said and leaned back against the scanner bed. He wasn't too keen on letting her know just how much that incision hurt.

The way she eyed him made him feel that she knew, but she left it alone. Instead she stepped up to him and kissed him briefly before turning around to leave. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back against him. "I would be so screwed without you," he said and kissed her once more.

"Yes, you would," she agreed, pulled out of his grasp and left the med bay.

He gave her about a minute to get out of earshot before he gritted his teeth and let out a low hiss. "Son of a …" he groaned and cupped a hand over the dully thudding wound, while grabbing the canister of tea with the other. He downed half the contents before the full effect kicked in and he could thereby testify that this stuff worked best fresh and hot.

***

The more he thought about it, the more clear it became to him that something had changed in the balance of power between himself and Scorpius. Without the tracer, the half-breed could no longer pursue him and that gave him some peace of mind. He wasn't keen on taking the next step by getting solid ground under his feet, but knew that he would have to get over that new anxiety before it turned into a phobia he couldn't manage.

It took two more stops at commerce planets before he could convince himself to go with the others and his palms were sweating and he felt the overwhelming need to hide all the time, but for once, the shopping spree went off without a hitch. There was no sign of Peacekeepers anywhere and once they set foot back on Moya, he began to shed that specific fear.

But he couldn't shed the urge that was growing inside him, the need to find out what the hell Scorpy wanted with him. For some reason that made no sense whatsoever, he felt like they were more on equal terms now that he could actually decide where he wanted to meet the half-breed and not the other way around. And it was clear to him at this point that he needed to make this happen, needed to find out what the hell Scorpius thought he had to offer.

The biggest obstacle right now was Aeryn. He knew without a shadow of doubt that she would oppose this; that she would get in his way if he involved her. But he couldn't very well make this happen without her knowing about it.

Command was quiet in the early hours of the morning and John just stood at the forward viewscreen and watched space glide by while trying to think of a way to do this without getting in over his head. His plans always turned to mush because he was too trusting, too naïve. Aeryn had a point there.

"What are you doing up?"

Her voice cut through his reverie and he turned back to face her, once again marveling at her beauty. She was a gorgeous woman, full of life and vigor. "Got stuff on my mind," he said and stepped up to meet her halfway. "What about you?"

"You were gone when I woke up," she said and slipped her arms around him. "What stuff?"

He grimaced. "Stupid stuff. Stuff that will land me in hot water if I go after it. Stuff I need to do," he said and knew he made little sense to her.

"I should never have told you that Scorpius just wants to talk," she said, surprising him. She knew him better than he thought.

"No, you did the right thing," he disagreed and pulled her closer. "I just can't ... I can't let it go," he confessed. "The more I think about it, the more I want to know what he wants. And I keep telling myself that we can meet on equal terms, that if I set the terms, he will follow them."

"He won't," she said. "Whatever the frell he wants, he will get it any way he can. If that means double-crossing you, he will. And you know what waits at the end of this path if you take it."

He grimaced. The Chair. It was a waking nightmare for him, another of those things he couldn't let go. Despite all the crap that had happened to him since, the Chair stood out as the worst of it. It had started it, had nearly liquefied his mind, had left him teetering on the brink of insanity, and he wasn't so sure he had actually recovered from that yet. "He wouldn't," he tried.

"He would," Aeryn disagreed. "And he will if he thinks it will give him what he's after. He will not hesitate to kill you if he feels he has to."

"He knows I don't have the tech any more, Aeryn," he argued.

"He knows you had it. And he may think he can force it to the surface by hurting you. And he will," she said, unrelenting in her approach. She knew how to push all the right buttons to make him uncertain about going forward.

He inhaled deeply and held his breath for a moment, then exhaled again. "You're right," he relented. _For the time being_ , he thought. _Give her time to process it, to realize it's the only way. She'll come around._

"You are not going to let this go, are you?" she asked quietly.

"I can't," he countered evenly. "You know I can't."

"You're frelled, John. You know that? You seek out these situations and you always end up in dren up to your frelling neck. Why can't you just let this go? He is not going to respond the way you want him to. You know he won't. Whatever it is that he wants from you this time around, he will get it whether you want to give it up or not." She grabbed his face with both hands. "Don't you understand yet? Why can't you see this? Why won't you understand that nothing good can come of meeting with Scorpius?"

He grabbed her wrists and just held on for a moment. "The more I think about it, the more I need to do it. It's ..." He closed his eyes, felt her hands on his face and just wished he could drop it. For her. For them both. But he knew he wouldn't be able to let it go. "I need to know what is so damned important that he has to hunt me all over the UTs to get it."

She tightened her grip a little. "Scorpius is obsessed. He will sacrifice the entire Peacekeeper corps just to get to whatever end goal he is after," she insisted.

"I know, but ..." He pulled her hands away from his face, kissed her palms and then looked her straight in the eye. "I need to know."

With a heavy sigh, she pulled back, away from him. "I am not going to stand by and watch you die, John. I can't do that again."

He could tell she was serious, but he also knew she wouldn't let him do this alone. "I'm not going to die. I'm just going to talk to that bastard, figure out what he wants. Maybe then I can sleep at night without worrying myself half to death that he's going to use whatever he managed to dig out of my head to lay waste to the galaxy."

"Then send him a frelling message. Don't meet him, John. Just communicate via com," she tried.

"I don't think he'll accept that as a viable option. Do you?" he asked.

"No," she consented. "At least let me make the plans then? Your plans always turn out wrong."

He couldn't help a smile at that. "I'm fine with that," he said.

"Good," she said. "Because if that frelling half-breed puts one toe out of line, I will shoot him myself," she added and eased back into his arms. "Now can we talk about something else?"

He wrapped his arms around her. "Like what?"

"Like how fast you can get back to bed so I can frell your brains out?" she countered with a vicious look in her eyes.

***

It turned out that getting a message to Scorpius wasn't all that difficult. The reply was short and to the point and the meeting had been set up for an out-of-the-way watering hole along the interstellar highways. It was a bare world with little to no hiding places. There would be no way that Scorpius and his soldiers could sneak up on them. Aeryn had chosen the planet for that specific purpose, but even so she was as nervous as she could get. Anything involving Scorpius would always make her nervous; especially when John was in the mix.

He stood a few paces away from where she stood waiting by the pod. She missed her prowler, which she had been forced to leave behind on the planet of the Sovereign, but knew they were well protected. D'Argo had Lo'La parked a bit further away, cloaked and ready to take off a moment's notice.

She watched John pace back and forth while he waited for Scorpius to arrive and when the prowler finally appeared, Aeryn was anything but surprised to see the marauder following closely in its wake. "John," she called out.

"I see it," he countered, but made no move to retreat.

She wanted to push away from the pod and grab him, make him see reason before the Peacekeepers could land, but she would be giving up the advantage her distance gave her. Instead she raised her pulse riffle and aimed it at the prowler, ready to shoot if necessary.

Scorpius exited the prowler and a moment later Braca and a few soldiers stepped out of the marauder. The half-breed held up a hand and they remained where they were while Scorpius covered the distance to where John now stood stock still.

"What a desolate place you have chosen, John," the half-Scarran said, spreading his arms in an all-encompassing gesture.

"The spot is not important, Scorpy. What do you want from me?" John countered. His tone was much steadier than Aeryn would have suspected.

"I have issues I wish to discuss with you. Issues best discussed in private," Scorpius countered. He kept his distance, but that didn't mean much.

"Whatever you have to say, Scorp, you can say here. There's nobody here but us chickens," John countered, which earned him a slight frown from Scorpius. Whether it was the saying the half-breed had issues with or John's refusal to play ball was beyond Aeryn.

She shifted her attention to the Peacekeepers loitering in the background, then back to Scorpius, who hadn't moved or spoken. He and John appeared to be engaged in a staring match and Aeryn again shifted her attention back to the soldiers. Braca was watching Scorpius very intently, which made Aeryn wonder what was going on. Technically, he should have been watching John and that worried her.

"I find your reluctance to meet me halfway a little annoying, John," Scorpius said.

John spread out his arms. "I'm here, aren't I? I met you halfway. I'm not going with you anywhere. If you want to talk, talk. Don't waste my time with this bullshit," he said, his tone steely.

Scorpius hissed, a sure sign of annoyance. Aeryn eyed him closely, then shifted her attention back to Braca and his men. Braca was still watching Scorpius and seemed oblivious to anything else. And then his features tightened a little, which alerted Aeryn to the very real possibility that she had missed something.

The split microt it took for things to go wrong was exactly what she had feared, although she had not foreseen what Scorpius had in mind. Where the pulse pistol came from was a mystery since he wasn't wearing a holster and his cooling suit had fairly few hiding places, but the sound of the shot was undeniable.

John jerked sideways, stumbled a step back and looked down himself before dropping down on one knee. His right hand found the wound before Aeryn could wrap her head around the event. Throwing caution to the wind, she rushed to his side, grabbing him before he could keel over. The fact alone that Scorpius had shot him was something she couldn't understand. If the half-breed wanted John alive, then how did it help to shoot him?

John groaned, the big ugly wound on his stomach oozing blood. Aeryn looked up to meet Scorpius' eyes. "What the frell?" she snapped.

"My medics can heal him," the half-breed said.

D'Argo came rushing toward them, his Qualta blade drawn and ready to fire.

"No," John gasped, clawing his fingers into Aeryn's arm.

And all she could do was hesitate. If she shot Scorpius, Braca and his men would shoot them all. If she turned Scorpius down, John would die. There was no other option. They were too far away from help and she did not have nearly enough medical expertise to deal with a wound that serious. If she wanted John to live - and there was really nothing in this universe she wanted more right now - then she would have to take Scorpius up on his offer.

"D'Argo," she said, holding up a hand, which stopped the Luxan in his tracks. "Go back to Moya. Wait for our signal," she said.

D'Argo stared at her, uncomprehending. "He shot him, Aeryn," he said as if he assumed she hadn't noticed.

"The medics on the command carrier are his only hope. He will die if we take him out of here without their help," she snarled, torn between anger and fear. "Please, D'Argo. Go."

Apparently, the Luxan could see the sense in her words, but he did not look happy. "Aeryn ..." he tried again.

"Go!" she demanded. "Please."

Finally, D'Argo relented. He lowered his Qualta blade and gave Scorpius a dark angry look before he turned around and strode back to his ship.

"Get him the help he needs," Aeryn barked at Scorpius. "Now!"

Scorpius waved his men over and they picked up John and carried him over to the marauder with Aeryn right behind them. She knew that John would never forgive her for this, but she also hoped that he would see reason; unless he died, of course, but that would leave her with only one reaction. She would shoot Scorpius and frell the consequences.

***

It was said that being shot in the stomach was the worst pain imaginable and John could only agree. It was a pain you wanted to get away from no matter what. The flight back to the command carrier was the longest he had ever been on for two specific reasons; the pain, which ate through him like acid, a burning, tearing kind of pain, and the fact that Aeryn had agreed to Scoprius' suggestion.

When she tried to help, all he could do was shove her away and she withdrew almost instantly, the hurt in her eyes very evident. He just did not have the stamina right now to address this issue. He needed her to know that he was not okay with this, but the thought of having to go through this alone, without her, made his heart shrivel inside his chest.

The medics stood by when they set down and hurried him to medical. The problem here was that none of them liked him all that much and their handling of him was therefore rough. With a wound like his, that meant a lot of added agony.

They moved him from the stretcher to an examination bed where he lashed out at one of the nurses - if that was what they were - because she grabbed him right next to the wound.

"Strap him down," one of the medics snapped, which he of course opposed with every ounce of strength he had left. The look in her icy-grey eyes was steely when she slapped a flat hand onto the wound and pressed down.

He couldn't breathe around the red hot agony her hand caused. The others held him down, forcing his arms down to the sides. "Let go," he ground out, straining against them. "Please, let go."

"Then stop fighting us," the medic snarled.

It took everything he had in him to stop resisting. She released her relentless pressure on the wound and instead turned to the task of stopping the bleeding and any seepage the shot may have caused. And he would have screamed but he simply didn't have the air. Having to restrain himself from squirming put added pressure on him and a part of him thought he would bust a vein if they didn't do something about the pain soon.

The sound of some sort of commotion drew everybody's attention for a second. The door to the room swung open and Aeryn stepped in, pulse pistol in hand, the look in her eyes that of pure rage. "Get the frell out of my way," she snarled when one of the medics tried to cut her off.

The man had sense enough to do as she said and scurried away, hands raised in surrender. John wanted to reach out for her, but with his hands tied to the examination table, he wasn't in any condition to do that. "Aeryn," he croaked, his voice breaking.

She pushed her way through the gathered, her eyes on him.

"Please, make them stop," he rasped, barely able to force the words out around the red hot ball of agony that was most of his torso.

Aeryn glanced at the wound, then at the head medic, and aimed her pulse pistol at the woman's head. "Give him something for the pain," she said, her tone icy.

"We don't know how he will respond," the medic countered in a sour tone of voice.

"Let's see how you respond to a blast in the face then," Aeryn snapped. "Do it! NOW!"

The medic raised both hands, obviously understanding that Aeryn meant business. She then nodded to one of her aides, who brought over an injector. The medic glared at Aeryn when she took it and then jammed it against John's neck and pulled the trigger. He jerked at the penetrating sting of the device, but the agony that was threatening to consume him abated immediately, fading away into a dull roar in the background.

He slumped back on the table, his breath ragged, until the medic returned her attention to his wound. Despite the painkiller, he felt every jab, and it made him grit his teeth.

Aeryn released his wrist from the restraints on her side and he used that moment to lash out and grab the front of the medic's tunic, yanking her in close. "Just because you don't like me doesn't mean you get to hurt me," he snarled, satisfied by the stunned and somewhat frightened look that crossed the woman's face.

She yanked out of his grip and took a step back. "Somebody else will finish this," she said, turned and marched out of the room.

For a moment, everybody just stood there and stared. Then one of the other medics, this one a male, stepped forward. Instead of continuing the abusive behavior of his colleague, he started out with numbing the area around the wound with a series of injections. Then he set about cauterizing the wound where it was needed before he filled it with something that looked like grey paste.

"What the hell is that?" John groaned.

"Synth-flesh. It closes the wound and promotes healing," Aeryn said while keeping an eye on what the medic was doing.

At this point, he was more scared than in pain. He wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of here, away from Scorpius and his demented ideas. And especially now he had no urge at all to talk to the half-breed. Fear made him feel phantom pain from the wound, but rather than take it out on the medic, who was doing a far better job than his colleague, John latched onto Aeryn's arm. "Don't you dare leave me alone," he rasped.

Aeryn glanced down at his hand locked around her arm, then met his eyes. "I never would," she promised.

***

After the deed was done, John was moved to a recovery room. Technically Aeryn wasn't allowed to stay with him, but after she had shoved the muzzle of her pulse pistol in a soldier's face, they had relented and left her with him.

For a long moment John just lay still and stared up at the ceiling. His right hand was still clamped around Aeryn's arm and he had yet to release his harsh hold. She glanced around the room, taking in the various surveillance devices scattered around the area, and sighed lightly. Her first instinct had been to demand they switch it off, but she knew they wouldn't. There really was no other option than to put the equipment out of commission, so she aimed her pulse pistol at the two cameras and shot them.

John jerked, glanced from the pistol to the now smoking holes in the walls, then back to Aeryn. "Surveillance?" he asked.

"Yes," she agreed. "There's probably more, but this will do for now."

Almost reluctantly, he unclenched his fingers and let go of her arm. In part, she was sorry he let go and assumed he was still angry with her.

"I had no choice," she said without looking at him, keeping her voice even while her eyes scanned the walls for further signs of surveillance.

When he made no move to reply, she glanced down at him and found him staring up at the ceiling. His breathing was shallow, his eyes a bit glassy. He looked feverish, but it was hard for her to tell if he was any warmer than normal without touching him and she assumed he wasn't too keen on her touch right now.

"I'm sorry. I should have worked harder on stopping you from going to this frelled meeting," she persisted. She had this need inside her for his forgiveness that made her feel almost sick.

"I should learn to listen to you," he countered quietly and groaned when he shifted. "I gotta learn to let go, huh?" he added with a shaky smile on his lips.

She pulled up a chair and settled down next to the bed and to her immediate relief he took her hand, squeezing it hard. "It would perhaps be beneficial if you could," she agreed with a vague smile of her own.

He took a couple of deep breaths, then started to struggle to sit up, a task severely hampered by the pain it was causing him.

Aeryn rose in alarm and grabbed his shoulders. "What the frell are you doing?" she demanded.

"We gotta get out of here," he rasped and only barely managed to repress a whimper.

"We can't leave, John. Not yet," she insisted and carefully pushed him back down. "You are in no condition to get up."

"I'm in no condition to answer any of Scorpy's questions, either," he pressed out, obviously afraid of what the half-breed had in mind.

"First and foremost, John, I am still armed. If he was going to harm you, he would have made certain I could not interfere," she said sternly, hoping to calm him down. It was not good for him to get this worked up in his present condition.

He stared at her for a moment longer, then deflated a little. "Won't take them any time at all to disarm you if they want to," he muttered.

She had to agree with him there, but she was still hopeful that it wouldn't come to that. If push came to shove, she had one option open. She just did not want to consider that unless there was no other way.

Before she could come up with an appropriate reply to that, Scorpius stepped into the recovery room. He eyed them, then glanced up at the destruction Aeryn had caused. "That was not necessary, Officer Sun. We are not keeping you under surveillance," he said.

"Better safe than sorry," Aeryn countered, using one of John's phrases. John in turn said nothing, but he didn't have to speak to let her know how nervous he was. "What do you want?"

"To check on our patient," Scorpius said evenly, "and to offer my sincerest apology. If I had known a shot would have that effect on him, I would never have ..."

"Spare me the dren," Aeryn snapped, cutting him off. "You knew what you did when you shot him. If all you want to do is talk, you could have talked to him on that planet."

Scorpius eyed her for a moment. He was hard to read, but no harder than that she could guess at what he might be thinking. "In any event," he said and paused to give her the opportunity of cutting him off again, which she didn't. "All I want is a word with John. Alone."

Aeryn shook her head. "Not going to happen. Whatever you have to say to him, you can say with me here." She made certain her tone revealed her intent to shoot to kill and Scorpius obviously got the point.

For a long moment none of them spoke. Then Scorpius took a step closer, which made Aeryn raise her pulse pistol. He stopped and raised his hands, signaling both surrender and no evil intent. "What business I have with John is for his ears alone," he said, focusing on John rather than her.

Aeryn glanced down at John, who was looking at anything other than Scorpius, his expression and body language revealing all too clearly how freaked out he was. It was not a good basis for negotiations. She knew that the shot had destroyed much of his bluster and that his almost primal fear of the half-breed was completely at the forefront. He felt exposed, vulnerable, at the mercy of a relentless enemy, and she assumed he expected Scorpius to strap him into the chair and rip his mind to shreds just for fun right now. She reached her left hand down to him and he grabbed it without hesitation, his sweaty fingers tightening almost convulsively over hers. "Then we have nothing to talk about," she said and looked back over at Scorpius. "As soon as John is able to walk, we are leaving. Unless we are your prisoners?"

Scorpius managed a smile at that. "Not at all. You are free to leave whenever you want," he claimed.

Aeryn aimed at testing that claim's validity as soon as possible. She nodded in acceptance of his words and squeezed John's hand. "He needs to rest," she said.

The half-Scarran lingered for a moment, then inclined his head in her direction, glanced briefly at John and then left the room again.

The microt the door had closed, John sat up. The fact alone that he could do this without passing out from pain told Aeryn a lot about his state of mind. "I can walk," he rasped.

"No, you can't," she disagreed.

"Aeryn, I need to get the hell out of here. Now! I'm about an inch away from a heartattack here," he pressed out and started to push the sheet aside.

She could tell that every move he made sent a shudder of pain through him and that was with the painkiller still in his system. She turned fully toward him and leaned down to grab his wrist, stopping him from pulling the sheet from his legs. "No," she said sternly. "You will not get up now. We are not leaving now. The pain-shot they gave you is very heavy duty. The fact that you are in agony now does not bode well. You need to rest."

He stared at her for a few heartbeats, his breath quick and shallow, his color ashen. "I can't stay here," he whispered.

"And you won't for any longer than necessary. But if that wound opens up again, you will die. And from what I could tell, it will be a very painful and most likely drawn out death. I am not watching you die when I can prevent it. And I can by keeping you in this frelling bed," she said sternly.

Obviously he responded better to her fear of losing him than his own recovery, so she used it as an incentive. And it wasn't exactly a lie either. She was terrified of losing him, of what it would do to her if he were to die. And she would do her utmost to prevent that from happening.

"Please, John. Rest now. We will leave as soon as you're able. But for now, you must rest," she insisted, hoping that she was finally getting through to him.

It took a moment longer than she had hoped, but eventually he gave a brief little nod and allowed her to help him lie back down. Needless to say he was not happy about it, but he did it for her and that put her mind at ease. "You'd better not go anywhere," he said quietly.

"I'm staying right here. All the time," she promised and settled back down on the chair.

***

He slept for a time. Knowing that Aeryn was there, keeping watch, made it a little easier, but he could not shed the fear. The realization of what Scorpius had in mind when he had suddenly brought out that gun had completely bypassed him until the split second before the half-breed had pulled the trigger and by then it had been far too late to avoid the shot. And he had to admit that it had knocked the sense right out of him. Despite his fear of the half-Scarran, he had never actually thought that Scorpius would consciously try to kill him and the shot that slammed into his stomach, searing its way through clothes and skin and flesh like a giant blowtorch, had rattled his conviction so much that he no longer knew what to believe.

When it had dawned on him that Scorpius had shot him to ensure they had a chance to talk, he knew that he could count on nothing where the half-breed was concerned, and that stoked his fear to newfound levels that bordered on terror; in other words, he lost control. All the bravado in the universe couldn't cover up how downright terrified he was at this point and he wouldn't put it past Scorpius to strap him into that horror contraption and rip his mind to shreds just to prove a point; namely that he could do whatever he wanted without anyone stopping him.

It was obvious that Scorpius wanted something from him, but John had no interest any more in finding out what that was. He wanted off this command carrier and he wanted to put so much distance between himself and Scorpius that he would practically be in another universe altogether. How he was ever going to get over this was beyond him. All he could see for his immediate future was fear-riddled to such a point that he would never want to set foot on another world ever again.

Aeryn was asleep in the chair next to the bed and John briefly wondered if Sebaceans were prone to getting kinks in their necks from sleeping in awkward positions like that. Since she had basically been up and running longer than he had, he didn't want to wake her up and, keeping himself as immobile as possible, he managed to get off the bed in a quest for a glass of water. The cup next to the bed was empty and he was parched.

Moving like a very old man and feeling older still, he made his way slowly over to the sink and came to a somewhat lurching halt when he reached it. The mirror reflected all that was wrong with him right now, he thought. He generally looked like Death warmed over, pale, tired, dark smudges under his eyes. Grabbing on to the sides of the sink, he leaned against it and dropped his head while trying to assess if he would be able to walk out of here today.

"What the frell are you doing out of bed?" Aeryn sounded tired and cranky and concerned all rolled into one when she stepped up beside him and stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Got thirsty," he countered and realized he sounded much the same.

"Then frelling tell me to get it for you," she chastised and invariably glanced down at his side, obviously looking for blood. "How the frell are you even moving with that wound?"

He blinked and looked down himself, then straightened up a little and gingerly brushed his fingertips over the edges of the area the synth-flesh covered. The thing he hadn't thought of before was the level of pain. It hurt, yes, but considering how it had felt when he had been shot and how it had felt at the subsequent manhandling by the PKs, he was doing worlds better today. "Uh …" He frowned and turned a little to face Aeryn. "I pretty much think I can walk out of here right now," he said.

Aeryn's expression was not what he had expected. She looked mostly like she wanted to rip the bandage off him to check the wound. "I have seen plenty of soldiers shot in the stomach," she said. "Some of them even survived it. And those that did had to recover for weekens before they were even able to get out of bed." She took an almost hesitant step back and eyed him up and down. "I have seen you wounded. You do not heal this quickly. What the frell is going on here?"

Uncertain about her reaction, he backed up and bumped into the edge of the sink, which sent a shiver a pain through him. He hissed through gritted teeth and only barely stopped himself from touching the wound.

Apparently his reaction settled whatever concerns she'd had, because she took a careful hold of his arm, steading him. "Let's get you back to bed," she said.

Although the idea was enticing - his legs did feel a bit wobbly right now - the thought that he might not be able to get back up made him stall. "No," he said. "We're leaving as long as I can stand on my own two feet, Aeryn. I need to get the hell out of here; as in right now."

She eyed him closely for a moment, then gave him the once over before settling for an arched eyebrow. "Are you certain you can walk more than a few steps without falling over? Scorpius will use it against you if you show weakness now," she said.

He considered her words, well aware that she wasn't doubting him, but rather worried what would happen if he wasn't up to the challenge. "I can walk out of here," he said with conviction. He might have to pay the price later, but he was convinced he could manage that much.

With a nod, she tapped the com-badge pinned to her vest. "D'Argo?"

" _Right here,_ " came the immediate reply.

"Pick us up. Now," she said, then glanced down at John's bare feet. "You need boots," she stated and strode over to the bed to pick them up.

With her help, he got into the boots and into his coat as well. By the time she was done, he was breathing hard.

"Are you sure about this?" she pressed.

"Never been more sure about anything in my life," he agreed.

"Good. And now we get to test Scorpius' claim that we are free to leave whenever we want," she said and guided him toward the door. "There is a bay right below us. All we need to do is get to the levelriser and into Lo'La and we're home free."

"Unless Scorpy decides to blast us out of the sky," he mused darkly.

Aeryn smirked. "He won't. If he wanted you dead, he would have killed you on that planet," she countered and opened the door.

They had barely stepped out of the recovery room before they saw Scorpius striding toward them, closely followed by Braca and a few soldiers. At the sight of John not only standing but walking on his own, Scorpius came to an immediate stop. Whatever had been on his mind, he was obviously surprised beyond reason at this turn of events.

"You're leaving?" he asked when they stopped a few steps from him right in front of the elevator doors.

"Yes. You said we were free to leave whenever we wanted to," Aeryn countered, not giving John a chance to open his mouth; not that he wanted to either.

It took a moment for the half-breed to reply, but obviously he was hard pressed to keep his end of this deal. "So I did," he admitted, albeit reluctantly. "I am just surprised to see John up and moving this soon. The wound was grievous at the best of times."

"Fortunately, John is a fast healer," Aeryn said, the conviction in her tone so strong, John would have stared at her openmouthed if he hadn't been so busy being scared of Scorpius' possible reaction to all of this. "I have taken the liberty of requesting a few necessities from medical to further his healing," she added. "And since he is now able to walk on his own, we see no reason to linger."

John had his right hand on his hip to prevent himself from leaning to the left to take the strain off the wound and he hoped they were through with the niceties, because he was rapidly running out of steam here.

Scorpius eyed them both for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. "Is John incapable of speaking for himself now?" he asked, his tone bordering on annoyed.

Before Aeryn could say something that John couldn't back up right now, he grabbed a hold of her shoulder and gritted his teeth in a display of anger. Whether it came out right was something he couldn't tell. "No, I'm not," he growled. "I just prefer to leave the talking to Aeryn where you're concerned."

Scorpius' expression tightened a little. He was obviously put off about the whole thing. But then he took a step back and made a sweeping gesture at the elevator. "By all means. If you feel you're up to the challenge," he said. "Allow me to take you to your ship then."

"I think we're perfectly capable of finding our own way," Aeryn shot back, her tone tight.

"Oh, but I insist," Scorpius said, his tone dry and chilly.

The doors to the elevator opened, admitting them into the spacious cabin, and Aeryn somehow managed to keep herself between John and Scorpius at all times. This might have a lot to do with the fact that he couldn't convince himself to release her shoulder. That she wasn't grimacing at the pressure he put on it was a bit surprising to him, but he was having a hard enough time focusing on breathing slowly and not doubling up to take the strain off his now throbbing stomach.

Scorpius and Braca left their platoon behind, but they were both keeping an eye on both Aeryn and John.

The cabin came to a stop and even though it could hardly be called a jolty stop, it still almost made John gasp. The idea of having to walk however many steps from the elevator to Lo'La almost made him dizzy, but he would be damned if he would let it show. In an effort to prove to the highly perceptive half-Scarran that he was indeed capable of doing this without help, he released his harsh grip on Aeryn's shoulder, but made certain she remained a barrier between him and Scorpius.

"You seem a little winded, John," Scorpius commented when the doors parted.

"You shot me in the stomach. What the hell did you expect?" John countered through gritted teeth.

"Don't talk to him," Aeryn advised and ushered him out of the cabin.

The anger gave him the needed momentum to get going and even though every step sent a shudder of hellish agony through him, he knew he could keep going until he was out of sight. The moment Lo'La's hatch closed, he could give up this pretense that he was fine.

D'Argo met them halfway and the path to Lo'La was framed by PKs. The Luxan eyed him worriedly, but made no move to step in. Obviously Aeryn had given him a warning glance.

"The bag I had brought down?" Aeryn asked, aiming this at one of the PKs standing around. The man glanced briefly at Scorpius, then picked up a bag and handed it to her.

They hurried as much as John could muster and all three of them expected to be stopped at any moment.

"I did want to talk to you, John," Scorpius said, trailing after them. "At your earliest convenience."

"Send me a postcard," John countered without looking back. He couldn't turn around. It would upend his balance and Aeryn was right, any sign of weakness apart from the obvious would land him in a world of trouble. There was no doubt that Scorpius was waiting for the moment to pounce.

He almost came to a stop when he caught sight of Lo'La's ramp. He had totally forgotten that it consisted of steps and he wasn't at all sure he could manage that right now. D'Argo, however, was as step ahead of him and grabbed his arm, literally hoisting him up the ramp without too much effort.

Aeryn backed up the steps and gave Scorpius a nod. "Thank you for your hospitality," she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

The half-breed hissed like an angry snake, but made no comment to that.

Lo'La's ramp closed and Aeryn turned back to face them. "Get us the frell out of here before he forgets his manners," she told D'Argo, who nodded and rushed for the controls.

Aeryn dumped the bag on the floor and took one step toward John, just in time to stop him from collapsing. His knees simply gave in and if she hadn't grabbed him, he would have landed on the floor. Instead she helped him ease down on the bench and then hunkered down in front of him.

"You are completely tinked, you know that?" she asked, but there was a smile in her voice.

Anything he may have wanted to say to that was lost in a groan when he doubled over. She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him back upright and nodded at the bench. Yeah, lying down would probably be a good idea.

He kind of lost track of what happened after that since the world around him grayed out and finally faded to black.

***

Aeryn tied him in as best she could to prevent him from falling off the bench and then glanced over at D'Argo. "How is he?" he asked without turning back.

Lo'La raced out of the hangar and into open space, the engine growling darkly. "I don't know, to be honest. I have a feeling that this burst of energy was out of sheer fear of Scorpius," she said and gave John a lingering look. "I'm afraid what this might have done to the wound."

"He is resilient," D'Argo said, a touch of admiration in his voice. "Moya has starburst away from this system. We are going to meet up with them in one solarday," he added.

Aeryn grimaced. She had hoped to get John into a bed as soon as possible. "Can they track you?" she asked and gently brushed her fingers through John's hair.

"No, not while she is cloaked," D'Argo said and sent a look back at her. "Are you alright?"

At that question, Aeryn deflated a little. She was sitting on the floor next to John and suddenly felt very tired. "Yes, I'm fine, D'Argo," she said and didn't really know if she was. She was tired and fed up with worrying about this frelling Human of hers.

"What did Scorpius want with him?" the Luxan asked, once more keeping his eyes on the controls. "Why would he go as far as shooting him and then letting you go?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't talk while I was around and I was not about to leave John alone with him." She leaned back against the edge of the bench, sensing the heat John was giving off. "Even at the best of times, I'm not happy about John being alone with Scorpius. With this wound, he's incapable of protecting himself. I just don't know what the frell Scorpius wants with him."

"This situation is frelled," D'Argo agreed quietly. "I suggest we keep a low profile for a while, stay away from the mainstream worlds and perhaps try to figure out what it is Scorpius wants before we make any other moves."

"Good suggestions, Ka D'Argo," Aeryn said with a smile. "I just have the feeling that Scorpius will only reveal his intentions to John alone and only face-to-face."

"That would be a problem," D'Argo agreed. "Get some rest, Aeryn. I shall get us to the rendezvous point as quickly as I can."

She nodded and leaned her head in against John's chest.

***

When the world decided to reassert itself, John was flat on his back, the golden vaulted ceiling of Moya's cells above him. He smiled vaguely, then raised his head and tried to remember how the hell he'd gotten back to his cell. Hell, he couldn't remember getting back to Moya. Yet here he was.

He exhaled slowly and let his head drop back down on the pillow. There was still pain, but it was dull and distant, more like an itch than actual pain. And he wanted it to stay that way, so he didn't move in the hopes of avoiding any aggravation of what should probably have been a fatal wound.

"You're awake."

"That's a blatantly stupid comment, really," he countered and rolled his head to the left. Aeryn stood in the doorway, a tray in her hands, a faintly bemused smile on her lips.

"Is it?" she asked. "You've been in and out of consciousness for two solardays. When we got you back here, you were burning up."

That made him frown. "Oh," he muttered and tried to reassess how he felt. But the pain was still a strong itch and he generally did feel far better than he had only two days ago. The first thing he moved was his left leg. Pulling it up a little, he tried to estimate if that would aggravate the itch into actual pain, but it didn't. The wound felt tight, but not painful.

"We should check the wound," she said and put the tray down next to the bed. "I managed to get a few packs of synth flesh in case you needed it. And some of that spray-on bandage."

"It feels … much better," he said and pulled the t-shirt up covering the wound. Where before it had looked angry red along the edges, it now didn't. "I'm pretty sure that stomach wounds aren't supposed to heal this fast," he added and looked up at her. "And, from what you said, I kinda get the feeling that's the same for Sebaceans, huh?"

"Pretty much," she agreed, her eyes on the wound. "Let's see how it looks," she added and went about peeling the spray-on bandage off. As it came off, it took big chunks of the synth-flesh with it, which had turned into a dry, bread-like substance. She carefully scraped it away, revealing thin yet healthy-looking pink skin underneath. The indent that should have been there was gone. Technically, there was no indication of a dangerous deep wound that had seemed to penetrate halfway through him. Aeryn stared at it for a moment, then looked up to meet his eyes. "It would seem that you respond differently to synth-flesh than Sebaceans do. I have never seen a wound that bad heal that fast in anyone," she said, stressing the words.

"Me neither," he admitted. "This has to be a good thing, right?"

"Yes, of course it is," Aeryn said, but sounded a bit doubtful. "I think you should be careful, though. Just in case. This new skin doesn't look very thick."

"Might be an idea to take it slow, huh?" he asked and gave her a ghost of a smile when she met his eyes. He wasn't entirely happy about this rapid healing either.

"I think we'll cover it with more synth-flesh for a few more solardays. Just to be on the safe side," she said and got up to grab the bag she had brought from the command carrier. She applied a layer of the artificial flesh and covered it with the spray-on bandage. "There. Just leave it on for a few more days and ... then we'll see."

"Right," he agreed and pushed up on his elbows. "It feels a little tight. The skin, I mean. And it's itching."

"That sounds like it should," Aeryn said with an arched eyebrow. "John ... about this whole mess."

"Yeah, I know," he said and dropped back down on the bed. "It's another one of those plans that went bad before it even began. I'm through trying to talk to that freak, though. Whatever he wants, he can shove it up the wazoo. I'm not interested anymore."

"He could have killed you," she said, a quiet intensity in her voice that made him look at her more closely.

"He almost did," he agreed. "I don't think I've ever experienced that sort of pain before. And I never want to experience it again."

"D'Argo suggested that we stay far away from mainstream planets for a while. That we stick to the backwaters and edges of the UTs," Aeryn said. "Pilot and Moya agree. They are as eager to be away from the Peacekeepers as the rest of us."

"Sounds like a plan to me," John said without hesitation.

"Are you hungry?" she asked and nodded at the tray.

John glanced down at it. "Foodcubes?" he asked. "That's all we've got?"

She smirked. "No, but I thought it might be best to start slow, considering that you've been shot in the stomach. And from what I could tell, there was seepage."

He frowned lightly until it dawned on him what she meant by seepage. "Well, whatever happened then isn't happening now. And I'm famished. It's not like those PKs fed me or anything," he complained. The idea of tasteless foodcubes made his skin crawl.

"I'll see if I can convince Chiana to create something then," Aeryn said and turned to leave, but she paused at the door. "Stay in bed. Please?"

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised and smiled lightly when she walked away. Then he sighed. "I was never a good patient," he muttered and pushed up on his elbows.

This was immediately followed by a stab in his guts that made him flinch. "Ow," he growled and shifted a little, hoping to take the pressure off the wound. The stab repeated itself, making him gasp at the intensity. "Shit," he muttered and figured he'd better go with Aeryn's suggestion and stay in bed. He eased back down and stretched out carefully, then held still for a moment. When no further pain followed in the wake of that, he breathed a sigh of relief. But the air got stuck in his throat when it suddenly felt as if someone was shoving a pin cushion into the wound.

He yanked the sheet away to reveal the synth-flesh covered wound and stared in terror at the rippling surface. Little welts in his skin branched out from the wound, the majority of them heading upward. "What the hell?" he gasped, then froze in mid-motion.

***

Aeryn tapped her com-badge when she didn't find Chiana in the galley. "Chiana? Where are you?"

" _Indisposed,_ " came the somewhat out of breath sounding reply.

Aeryn rolled her eyes. "Could you two frell on your own time? Like during the sleep cycle?" she snapped and cut the com-badge off before either of them could come up with a reply. She considered her options for a moment, but decided that she was not going to try her hand at preparing food just yet. John would just have to settle for foodcubes for now.

That decided, she left the galley again and headed back toward his quarters. He would understand.

She rounded the corner and came to a stop when she caught sight of his cell. The sheet was on the floor and there was no sign of John. "John?" she called and covered the distance in a few long strides. She listened to the silent interior for a moment. "John," she tried again.

She tapped her com-badge. "Pilot, do you know where John is?" she asked.

" _No, I was not aware he was missing,_ " Pilot replied.

"Can you send out some DRDs to locate him? He is in no condition to be wandering around Moya right now," Aeryn said and set off in the opposite direction she had come from. "I'll look for him too."

" _I have dispatched as many DRDs as I can spare right now,_ " Pilot said.

Aeryn searched the tier she was on with no luck. "Why the frell would you get out of bed?" she muttered and took an access ladder to the next tier.

" _Aeryn. It would seem the Commander is in the landing bay on tier seven,_ " Pilot suddenly said.

Aeryn, halfway up the ladder to tier five, stopped dead. "Why the frell is he in the landing bay?" she asked and reversed back down to tier six and onward to tier seven.

" _It appears he is leaving,_ " Pilot said and even he sounded puzzled now.

"Leaving?" Aeryn felt a cold rush of fear. "Open the coms. Put me through to the pod," she snapped.

" _Coms are open,_ " Pilot replied.

"John? Where the frell are you going?" she demanded. Nothing but dead air answered her. "John! Answer me!" she pressed.

And still there was nothing but silence at the other end.

" _The pod has left Moya,_ " Pilot announced.

Aeryn skittered to a stop outside the bay doors and stared at them. "What the frell is going on here?" she muttered. "Where is he going? Do you know?"

" _Moya will attempt to keep up with the pod, but its course is erratic,_ " Pilot said.

"Of course it is. He's in no condition to be up, let alone fly anywhere," Aeryn huffed and kicked the bay doors hard. Moya currently only had one pod and that meant Aeryn had no way of following John.

Moya suddenly made a violent turn, which sent Aeryn skittering backward into the opposite wall. The leviathan changed course again and Aeryn barely managed to hang onto the rib she had slammed into to stop herself from being thrown across the corridor again. And then Moya starburst. Hanging on for dear life, Aeryn could hear a squeal from Chiana over the coms and a grunt which probably came from D'Argo.

" _What the frell is going on here?_ " D'Argo yelled.

"Pilot! Why is Moya starbursting?" Aeryn yelled.

" _She detected a command carrier,_ " Pilot replied.

"Frell it!" Aeryn snarled. "Tell her to turn around. Go back. We need to help John," she yelled.

" _I shall attempt to reason with her,_ " Pilot countered.

Moments later, the leviathan left starburst, made another abrupt turn and reentered starburst again. Aeryn felt her stomach roll uneasily at the constant back-and-forth, but also attributed it to being because of worry.

The microt Moya dropped out of starburst again, Aeryn was on her feet and on her way to command. She needed to see for herself what the frell was going on outside. "Pilot, any sign of the pod?" she yelled.

" _No. Both the pod and the command carrier appear to have left the area,_ " Pilot replied, worry in his voice.

Aeryn skittered into command and stopped at the map table. "Show me," she said.

The display flickered to life, showing her their immediate surroundings. And there was nothing out there; nothing but planets and space.

"Aeryn." D'Argo's voice pulled her out of her staring match with the map and she glanced over one shoulder at the Luxan.

"He's gone," she said, not sure how to handle this reality. "Why the frell would he leave? Why ..." She stopped, staring into the middle distance for a moment, then pushed away from the map table and strode past him.

D'Argo, obviously concerned, followed her. Chiana joined them on route and Rygel turned up close to John's quarters.

Aeryn grabbed the bag with the medical supplies and upended it, spilling a couple of packages of synth-flesh and a few cans of the spray-on bandages onto the floor. Without hesitation, she hunkered down, ripped open one package of synth-flesh and spilled it onto the floor. It leveled out, spreading into a fairly big pool, and in the sea of grey, little things wiggled. Aeryn picked one of these wiggling things up and eyed it for a moment. "Frell that fekkik," she snarled.

"What the frell is that?" Chiana asked and leaned closer.

"Stay away from it," Aeryn warned and rose, stepping back to avoid coming in contact with the synth-flesh. She dropped the little metal critter back into the puddle, pulled out her pulse pistol and blasted the dren out of it.

D'Argo, Chiana and Rygel drew back a little, all three of them concerned about her present state of mind. "Aeryn," D'Argo tried again. "What is going on here?"

"Those probes," she said, nodding at the now smoldering spot on the floor, "can be used for a lot of things. One of them is to assert temporary control over an individual." She exhaled slowly. "In other words ... Scorpius has once again frelled with John's head. And this time around, he has managed to make me give him the hardware."

"Frell me," Chiana muttered. "Does that mean he's gone back to that fekkik?"

"Very much against his will, yes," Aeryn said. "And we have no way of tracking them." The realization that this was it; that she had reached the end of the line and had no way of finding or retrieving John now, made her heart hurt. She closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists. "I failed him."

"No, you did not, Aeryn. Scorpius is cleverer than any of us thought. This is not your fault," D'Argo tried while placing a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it off and dropped down on the edge of John's bed. "No, it's my fault. I requested this dren. I should have found it myself, should have made certain they could not tamper with it. I should have known. This **_is_** my fault."

D'Argo hunkered down in front of her, drawing her attention. "Scorpius just really wants to talk to John. Let's hope that's all this is. That he wants to talk to him. We should stay here for a while; wait; see what happens. Maybe he managed to escape. Maybe they didn't see him," he said.

Aeryn eyed him for a microt, then nodded. "You're right. We should stay here, seeing as that running all over the UTs won't do anything," she said and met his eyes. "Have I ever told you that I hate waiting?"

D'Argo smiled. "You don't have to tell me. I know," he countered.

***

Two solardays passed where Aeryn found it hard to do anything other than pace around command. She was itching to move, to go after John, and if she had known where to look, she would have gone. But not knowing where to start looking made it impossible and she could see the sense in D'Argo's suggestion that they stay put; in case John came back.

"Frell," she muttered and kicked a discarded cup across the room. It hit the opposite wall with a loud clatter.

"Kicking the China isn't going to help."

Aeryn turned around to face Chiana. The girl was not smiling and Aeryn knew she was just as anxious to find John as the rest of them. "China?" she asked. "Is that a different way of saying Chiana?"

That made Chiana huff out a laugh that held little merriment. "No, you fekkik, it means cups and plates in Crichton-speak," she countered.

"English," Aeryn corrected her. "That's what he calls his language. English." She turned away, balling her hands into fists. "Frell, where is he?"

"I don't know. Are you itching as much as me to go out there and find him?" Chiana countered and slid up beside Aeryn. She hesitated briefly, glancing at Aeryn, then slipped an arm around her back.

"If ever I see Scorpius again, I am going to blast his frelling head off. And I will burn the remains to make sure he never comes back to haunt John again," Aeryn said, gritting her teeth in frustration. But she made no move to dislodge Chiana's arm around her back. Instead she leaned a little closer, feeling the heat coming off the younger female in waves.

"Good idea," Chiana said and nestled more closely against her. "Can I help?"

Aeryn smirked joylessly. "No, he's mine," she said and slipped an arm around Chiana's shoulders. "What's with you? You're not usually this hands-on with me."

"Nah, but I figured you might need a little closeness right now," Chiana countered quietly and wrapped her other arm around Aeryn too, locking her in a sideways embrace. "Maybe we should do something to take our minds off this, huh?"

Aeryn closed her eyes, then planted a kiss on top of the girl's head. "How many times do I have to tell you, Chiana? I will not frell with you," she said, but did not release her own hold on the girl.

Chiana chuckled. "Can't blame a girl for trying, can you? I get what Crichton sees in you."

"Thank you for that praise," Aeryn said a little dryly. "It's enough that I frell one alien, though."

This made Chiana laugh out loud. "You are so frelling tinked, Peacekeeper."

"Ex, if you please," Aeryn corrected her and returned her attention to the forward viewscreen. "Where the frell is he?" she muttered.

Chiana remained silent with her arms around her and her head resting against Aeryn's shoulder.

***

He was on a bed, his hands tied to the sides, while his breathing was shallow and a bit labored. One minute he had been on Moya, concerned about the stabbing pain from his wound, the next he had been standing in front of Scorpius, feeling so lousy he had dropped to his knees before some of Scorpy's soldiers had stopped him from hitting the floor face first. He had no recollection of how he had come to be on the command carrier and he was so close to terrified that he found it difficult to focus on anything other than this debilitating fear.

"How are you feeling?"

Scorpius stood at the foot end of the bed, the same one he had been in when he had been moved to recovery, watching him closely. So far, John had refused to talk to the half-breed. As a matter of fact, he hadn't spoken to anyone yet. All he wanted was to wake up from this damned nightmare. Whatever Scorpius had done to get him to come back here, it had left him depleted and his wound had opened up again a little.

"My medics tell me you are doing better," Scorpius continued. "The synth-flesh works much better on you than it does on Sebaceans." He trailed around the bed to John's right side, which made John turn his head to the left.  "Needless to say, you put yourself in jeopardy by leaving our care too soon. I apologize for the underhandedness of your return, but you left me no other option."

Anger rose in a wave inside him and he looked up at Scorpius. "What the hell do you want from me?" he pressed out through clenched teeth. Anger was better than fear, but not by much.

Scorpius reached out and patted his arm. "Just rest and revitalize. We shall speak soon enough," he said and put on that freakish smile of his again.

"I don't have the tech any more. You know that," John insisted.

"Oh, I know you think that," Scorpius agreed. Those words sent a shiver of fear through him. "I find it hard to believe that it's gone, though. I think it is merely repressed."

John shook his head. "No, it's gone. Why would they leave it in there?"

The somewhat bemused expression on Scorpius' face made him shudder. "Why would they have given it to you in the first place and not tell you about it? No, I am quite convinced that it's in there," he said and tapped a finger against John's brow. "I'm certain we can find a way to dig it out."

The hidden threat in those words upped his fear. "There's nothing to dig out," he insisted, well aware that nothing he said would change Scorpius' mind.

"We shall see," Scorpius said. "Now, rest. You'll need your strength." That said, he left John alone again.

***

It took two days more before the medic - the same one he had threatened during his 'surgery' - deemed him able to tolerate questioning. John wasn't at all sure he was ready for that, but then again, how did you get ready for something like the Aurora Chair?

It took four soldiers to get him to that dreaded room. Despite his fairly depleted state, he put up quite a fight, yet nothing he did was good enough to stop them from strapping him into the chair.

Scorpius stepped up on the dais, his demeanor that of a kindly teacher, yet all John saw when he looked at him was the impending trip to Hell. "As I told you before, if you do not fight the chair, it will be easier. Let us probe freely and I shall keep the digging to a minimum."

"How about you don't dig at all?" John countered, his voice jittery. The fear laced every word and he would sell his soul right now to avoid getting reacquainted with this contraption. "Please."

"What you know is of vital importance to the continued existence of the Peacekeepers as a whole. The freedom of this galaxy is in your hands, John. If you had not destroyed the wormhole weapon you created, none of this would be necessary," Scorpius said.

"So, you lied. You don't want to talk. You just want to torture me again." He couldn't help the almost pained smirk spreading over his lips.

"I do not torture people, John," Scorpius disagreed.

"Call it what you want. I call it torture," John shot back and made a helpless jerk forward without getting anywhere. "Don't do this to me. Please."

"Just allow us to probe freely and it will be over a lot faster," Scorpius said and raised a hand, signaling his aide to begin the process.

"No," John rasped.

***

The floor rose up to meet him and he made no attempt to brace the fall. The slap-in-the-face of the metal floor centered him a little, but even then he made no move to vacate the spot where he had fallen. The soldiers that had dragged him from his doom to this cell left again, slamming the door behind them, and all he could focus on was the constant jitter rippling through his limbs, the hot throb of the bleeding wound on his stomach, and the steady, pulsating agony that was his head. It was an effort to breathe, to think, and the notion of having to move made him feel nauseous, so he didn't.

How long he lay there wasn't something he wasted too many thoughts on, but when the door behind him opened, he groaned. It couldn't have been that long and the idea that they were back to drag him back to the chair almost made him panic. And still he could not find the motivation to move.

"Move him over to the mat," a sour voice said.

Two soldiers grabbed him, roughly, and dragged him over to the mat before dropping him again.

"Could you be a little more careful? Scorpius will have your heads if he dies," that voice snapped.

The soldiers grabbed him again and turned him over on his back and John kept his eyes closed, hoping against hope that whoever the voice belonged to would leave him alone if this person thought he was unconscious. No such luck, though.

"Get out. Give me some room to work," that voice said harshly. After a moment, the person behind the voice slapped him lightly. "Stop pretending. I know you're awake."

Reluctantly, he cracked a lid and squinted at the medic. There was some part of him that resented her deeply and wanted to lash out. But when he tried to rear up to do just that, she pressed a hand against his wound, driving all the air out of his lungs. Feebly, he clawed at her arm to get her hand away from the now very sore spot.

"Behave yourself," she warned and finally let go again. "I've come to check on your general state of health; in other words if you're capable of tolerating more of Scorpius' questioning right now."

Considering that this female had no love for him, he assumed she would give Scorpy the go-ahead and watch him die. Instead she examined him, changed the dressing on his wound, and finally rose again. She stared down at him for a moment, her cold eyes making him shiver, and then she turned around and left, closing the door behind her. Only, she didn't close it properly.

" _How is he?_ " Braca's voice was low, almost too low to hear.

" _Not good, I'm afraid. If Scorpius wants anything out of this one, he will have to let him rest for at least a solarday,_ " the medic replied, her tone bordering on the derisive.

" _I shall pass that on to Scorpius,_ " Braca said.

" _Do that,_ " the medic agreed, her voice fading along with her footsteps.

John waited for the click of the door, telling him that it had been locked, but the click didn't come and he listened to the fading footsteps of the ambitious Peacekeeper captain.

For a long while he just laid there, eyes half closed, his breathing shallow and labored, while he listened, focusing all of his fading strengths on that one task. But there were no further sounds to be heard.

With an effort almost beyond him, he managed to sit up. His stomach burned, his head throbbed, his eyesight kept clouding over, but he still moved, slowly, meticulously, until he had gained his feet and stood leaning heavily against the wall. It took everything he had in him to move, but this chance might not present itself again. He took a slow step forward, already breathing hard, then another, using the wall for support, until he reached the door. He placed a shivering hand against the metal and felt it give. It wasn't locked, wasn't even closed all the way.

Carefully, he gave it a push and it swung halfway open, revealing an empty corridor beyond. He stood there for a moment, almost hanging off the doorframe, and listened intently to his surroundings. The lights in the corridor were dim, which told him that it was the sleep cycle. He wasn't entirely sure if that meant less crew would be about, but he assumed so. Using the wall for support, he made his way into the corridor, stopped briefly to allow his wavering eyesight to settle down, then pushed on.

Step by step he moved out of the detention area and judged that there were no other detainees since there was nobody around guarding the place. He veered off into another corridor, then another, and had no idea where he was heading. There were no signs directing him anywhere. All he could hope for was that he didn't run into anyone, which was a bit of a challenge on a ship that held fifty thousand people.

Worn thin, he stumbled now and again, and was only able to walk a fairly straight line because he was using the wall as a guide. He wasn't entirely sure of where he was going and could only think of the next step he had to take. A sound up ahead made him stumble into a side corridor and flatten himself against the wall, one hand pressed against his mouth to keep any sounds he might make at bay.

A few Peacekeepers walked past, but none of them noticed him. He remained where he was for a moment longer, having to convince himself to get moving again, and then finally peeled himself off the wall and staggered back out into the main corridor and continued his somewhat jittery trek toward destinations unknown. The floor beneath his bare feet was cold and the t-shirt and sweats he was wearing did little to warm him, but his main focus - such as it was - was on finding a place to hide or a way to get off the carrier. A part of him believed he would soon be discovered and dragged back to his doom, but there was that other part that wanted to fight, to get out in one piece.

He rounded another corner and hurriedly had to draw back. Just ahead of him, there were elevators, and a group of Peacekeepers were waiting there, their backs turned to the corridor he was in.

"I don't know about you, but I think that Scorpius is frelled," one of them said. "I mean, what is he even doing here, in command of a carrier like this?"

"Keep your voice down," another one warned. "Not that I don't agree with you. We are all irreversibly contaminated just by being under his command."

"Shut up. This is no way to talk about our commanding officer," a third one intoned a little angrily.

The elevator doors opened and the group filed in. Moments later, further comments were cut off and John was once again alone in the corridor. He stood still for a moment, considering his options as much as he was currently able to. The elevator would take him to the landing bays. But it would also leave him exposed if anyone was waiting for it. The best option would be to find the stairs, if there were any.

Pushing away from the wall again, he moved on, his right knee folding up every so often. He moved slowly, one hand constantly trailing along the wall, his head down, until he nearly stumbled over a well with rungs. He stared at it for a moment, his tired mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and realized he had found the elusive stairs. A ladder wasn't ideal in his present state, but he had no other options.

Sending a glance in either direction along the corridor, he assured himself he was unobserved and then made his way down the ladder. The next level was another corridor, so he continued. Since he had no idea where the landing bays were, he had to make the best of it. And something told him that moving into the bowls of the command carrier might make it easier for him to move undiscovered.

His right foot hit the floor on the next level, which told him that this was the end of this stair well. He hung onto the rung for a moment, trying to steady himself while an almost incontrollable shudder rippled through him. After it abated, he slowly turned, still holding onto the rung, and blinked at the expanse of the bay he had located out of sheer luck.

It was a landing bay and it was vast. Rows upon rows of prowlers sat there in the muted lighting of the bay and at the far end, the enticing opening that showed space drifting by. He couldn't retain a whimper, which spoke both of despair and hope.  Steeling himself for the trek across the bay, he sent a look around in search of mechanics or pilots or anyone, but the bay seemed devoid of life. Maybe this was some sort of backup bay, he mused and gingerly released the rung.

Without immediate support, walking became an ordeal as he staggered forward. His feet felt like lead weights, his stomach throbbed with every step he took, and most of all he just wanted to lie down and sleep.

When he reached the first prowler in line, he stopped to catch his breath, one hand on the pointy nose of the ship, but decided that the closer he got to the exit, the easier it would be to actually get the hell out of here. He had fairly few illusions left about his escape right now, though. His hope had almost been extinguished. If the Peacekeepers didn't catch him now, Scorpius would probably activate whatever hardware had forced him to return to this ship of horrors.

He moved forward, using the evenly spaced prowlers for support and almost lost track of time and space when he suddenly realized he'd reached the end of the line. But closer to the opening sat another row of prowlers. These looked slightly different, seemed to be a bit bigger, and they were pitch black.

There was a path between the normal prowlers and these new ones and he almost couldn't stomach having to walk that bit without support. But there was something about the sleekness of these crafts that beckoned him and he finally convinced himself to cover the distance and then made his way down to the last one in the row. This craft was so close to the opening that he could actually feel the chill of space enveloping him. His breath puffed out in thin vapor clouds. Mesmerized, he stared at the stars out there and wondered how far he would get before they blasted him out of the sky.

"Get going," he muttered to himself and shifted his wavering attention up to the craft he was currently leaning against. The six rungs on the side of the craft seemed almost too much for him to handle and he had to convince himself that it was worth the effort before he somehow managed to leverage himself upwards. His nearness activated some detection device, which opened the canopy for him. Grateful that he wouldn't have to wrestle with a locking mechanism he probably didn't understand, he slipped into the seat and slumped back in it, briefly allowing his eyes to close.

The canopy closed above him with a quit thud and he blinked rapidly a few times, then focused his aching eyes on the dashboard. Was it even called that in a craft like this? He smirked joylessly. There was really no reason for him having made it this far if he passed out now, so he would have to keep going a little bit longer. The console in front of him looked pretty much like that of the normal prowlers. There were a few extra buttons and dials, but for now he focused on the ones he recognized and pushed the button that would start the engine. Prowlers in general were quiet machines, but this one he couldn't even hear. "Huh," he muttered. Everything was in the clear, all the lights that should be on were on.

Using reserves he didn't know he had, he strapped himself in while trying to avoid any pressure on the wound on his stomach. That was a bit difficult because the harness wasn't designed with stomach wounds in mind. He considered the safety versus the pressure on the wound and decided to forego the safety for now. Then he grabbed the control column with a shivering hand and raised the craft off the bay floor. It wobbled a little, curtsy of his unsteady hands, but he managed to stabilize it before nudging it forward toward the enticing opening.

His tired gaze skimmed over the dashboard and settled on a sign he identified as 'shimmer'. "Huh," he muttered and pressed it. Nothing apparently happened with the exception of the control light over the label coming on. Aware that he needed to pay attention before he crashed into something, he tore his eyes away from the button and focused on guiding the craft out of the command carrier.

What he wasn't hearing the whole time were alarm claxons. He was stealing a Prowler, escaping from a Peacekeeper command carrier, and as of yet nobody seemed to have noticed. It made him smile a little as he guided the prowler - he had decided that it had to be one despite its slightly different shape - away from the command carrier with both hands wrapped around the control column.

One button looked interesting enough for him to push it and he was practically thrown back in the seat and flattened against it when the afterburner kicked in and hurtled the prowler into space. Within minutes the command carrier had fallen away behind him, a mere spec on the display that covered the front of the canopy. And still there was no pursuit. He figured he would wonder about that later, but right now he needed to be gone as fast as possible and that seemed to be a very real possibility now; at least until Scorpius realized he was gone and activated whatever had forced him to leave Moya in the first place. Well, at least that freak knew he wasn't happy with the situation now.

The afterburner sputtered out of life after a while and he wondered if he had burned up all the fuel. A brief check of the gauge that would tell him such things made him realize that the afterburner obviously ran on a different fuel supply than the craft in general.

"Auto-pilot," he muttered and searched for the right button. It refused to engage when he pushed it, until he realized he needed a destination. And that was when it hit him that he had no idea where he was or how to find Moya. "Aw man," he rasped.

Something was nagging at the back of his mind and he fingered the setup for a moment, then pressed the auto-pilot button again. This time it engaged. "Great. I'll probably end up at the butthole of the universe," he muttered. It was getting harder by the minute to keep his eyes open and eventually he allowed himself to drift off into oblivion.

***

Scorpius viewed the data stream with rising annoyance. "Is there anything? Any indication of a block?"

"No," his aide said. She glanced at him, her expression bland. She was one of the few Peacekeepers not afraid of him, but then, she wasn't afraid of anything. Scorpius assumed that she had a disorder that made her emotionless. "There is no indication of what you are looking for."

Scorpius hissed angrily. "And now they tell me I can't keep digging for another solarday because he's too frelling weak," he growled.

Before his aide could comment, the doors parted and Braca stepped in. "Sir," he said and stood at attention.

Scorpius could tell that something was amiss. "What is it, Captain?"

"I don't ... he's gone, sir," Braca stammered.

"Excuse me?" Scorpius asked, not sure what Braca meant with 'gone'.

"As in not in his cell. I have sent a platoon out to look for him, but ... it seems the medic neglected to close the door properly when she left him and ... he must be somewhere on the carrier. We just need to locate him," Braca said.

"No need," Scorpius said, picked up a box and pressed a button on it. "The probes will bring him back."

His aide glanced up at him. "Sir?"

Scorpius could already feel his temper flaring. "What now?"

"The probes will not bring him back," she said. "The current of the Aurora chair has a devastating effect on the probes. They are most likely not functioning anymore; and if they are, then at a severely reduced rate. One that Crichton will be able to overcome even in his depleted state."

It took every ounce of his considerable willpower to not rip her head off for this. Not that it was her fault. But the anger that seared through him made his head hurt. "So, you are telling me that Crichton, should he have found a way off this carrier, is out of my reach?" he asked, his voice forcibly calm.

"Yes, sir," the aide agreed.

Scorpius focused on Braca, who still stood at attention, his eyes on nothing. "Find him, Captain. And prey that he has not found a way off this carrier."

"Yes, sir," Braca said, his tone tight. He turned around and rushed out of the room.

For a moment Scorpius just stood there and stared at the door, every fiber of his body screaming to release the Scarran side. But then he drew in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "What do you believe are his chances of making it out of here?" he asked quietly without looking at his aide.

"Fair," she countered evenly. "If he is together enough to find his way to the prowler deck, more than fair," she added almost thoughtfully.

"Find out if any of the prowlers are missing, will you?" Scorpius asked, his tone sugary.

She nodded and rose to pursue that order, leaving Scorpius to fume in peace.

***

It took less than an arn for Braca to return and he did not have good news. "Sir," he said. The man was pale as a sheet, which told Scorpius more than mere words could. "One Prowler is missing. There is no sign of it, no trajectory to pursue. We can only assume that Crichton has somehow made it off the carrier."

Scorpius stood very still, the control box for the probes in his hands, while he stared at the sole button and wondered what it all was good for when everything he tried to accomplish was destroyed like this. "Try to track him nonetheless," he suggested quietly. "And make certain that he is not harmed if you are able to retrieve him. He is extremely valuable to me."

Braca was obviously taken aback by the calmness Scorpius displayed, but like the good little Peacekeeper he was, he nodded once. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir." He turned around and rushed back out, leaving Scorpius alone again.

"And do make certain that you find him, Captain," Scorpius continued to the empty room. "Or I might be forced to take it out of your hide."

***

John jerked awake, then froze when the involuntary movement he made sent a shiver of pain through his stomach. The pain abated again and allowed him to focus on the fact that his skin was crawling. He grimaced and gingerly rubbed his left arm.

Something was beeping and he ran is gaze over the controls to locate the source of that sound for a moment before he focused on the transparent map display on the front of the canopy. Whatever he had programmed the auto-pilot for was getting closer, he realized. He just couldn't remember what he had programmed it for. Licking dry lips, he grabbed a hold of the control column, thereby disengaging the auto-pilot, and dragged back a little to take some of the speed of.

His whole body ached and not in a good way. He wanted a bed and about a year of recovery time. But most of all he wanted to find Moya. He just didn't know how.

Fighting to stay focused while trying hard to ignore that creepy-crawly feeling that rippled over his skin at regular intervals, he just sat back and watched while his destination approached. For all he knew, the hardware that Scorpius had once again managed to hide inside him had made him plot a return route to the command carrier.

The thought alone made him shudder. He took a firmer grip on the control column and slowed the prowler down even more. According to the instruments, whatever he was heading toward should now be visible and he scanned the immediate area of space for the hulking mass of a command carrier without finding even the slightest sign of it.

And then he saw her. Hidden in the cloudy atmosphere of a gas giant, he recognized the shape of the leviathan and leaned forward a bit, only to stop when that caused a cramp-like stab from his stomach. "Ow," he groaned and slumped back again. He couldn't tell if it was Moya, but it looked like her. How he had managed to locate her was so completely beyond him that he was beginning to think of it as a miracle.

He steered the prowler toward the leviathan and expected the coms to burst to life with demands for identification any moment now. But nothing happened and he couldn't for the life of him remember how the coms worked in a prowler right now. He felt lucky that he was even vaguely aware and able to think beyond basic needs right now and knew he was fading fast. He needed to land this craft before he passed out again.

Like it was customary for Moya, her bay doors were open while she drifted calmly through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. He seemed to recall that she took on nutrients in this state. Whatever the reason, he was grateful that he didn't have to struggle to figure out how the coms worked right now and guided the prowler into the first bay he came across.

His landing was less than stellar, but he managed to avoid banging into anything. The canopy rose when he did and he hauled himself laboriously over the edge and ascended to the bay floor with slow measured movements. Even so, every move he made was a painful one. As worn out as he was, all he could focus on right now was getting to bed. The idea that this leviathan might not be Moya did cross his mind, but he didn't have the fortitude of mind to care about it. He stumbled over to the doors and out into the corridor, single-minded determination driving him forward.

How he got to his quarters was beyond him. All he knew was that he was suddenly there and that his stomach felt like he had just been shot again. He staggered and barely caught himself against the latticework of the wall, then pushed off and took the last few steps over to the bed, where he collapsed. He had enough clearness of mind left to shift onto his back before the darkness once again overtook him and plunged him into the depth of unconsciousness.

***

The waiting game had always been one that Aeryn hated. She had never been good at sitting around and waiting for the call before a campaign while she had still been a Peacekeeper, and she was no better at it now, sitting on Pilot's console, waiting for something, anything to reveal itself. How long had it been? Four solardays? Five? She couldn't remember, knew only that John was missing, and that Scorpius had him, and that she had no way of saving him, because she had no clue where he was.

"Anything?" she asked and glanced hopefully at Pilot.

"No, Aeryn, still nothing," Pilot countered with infinite patience. He glanced back at her and reached a claw out to her, laying it gently on her knee.

It always amazed her how something so big could be so gentle. She laid her own hand on top of his claw and smiled. "I'm driving you fahrbot, aren't I?" she asked.

"No, not at all. I understand the urgency. I just don't know what ..." He trailed off and shifted his attention to one of the controls. "That is odd," he said.

Aeryn leaned forward. "What is it?" she asked, hoping against hope.

"We seem to have picked up a prowler in the landing bay on tier seven, hammond side," he said and glanced at Aeryn, obviously not happy about the unannounced guest.

"How the frell did it get in there without Moya detecting it?" she asked and slipped off the console. "I'll take a look. Is there any sign of life?"

"No, none," Pilot said. "It seems to be merely sitting there. But I did not detect it the last time I made the sweep. It must have come in not too long ago."

Aeryn nodded, tapped her com-badge and strode across the bridge toward the door. "D'Argo, meet me in the landing bay on tier seven, hammond side. And bring your Qualta blade. We have unannounced visitors."

" _On my way,_ " D'Argo replied at once.

Aeryn detoured past what she had come to call the armory - a cell where they stored all the weapons they had collected over the arns - armed herself and hurried to the bay on tier seven. D'Argo had beat her to it and was standing just inside the doors.

"There is no sign of movement," he said quietly.

Aeyrn nodded and edged into the bay where she got her first look at the prowler. "What the frell?" she muttered. She recognized the design and understood now how this prowler had managed to approach and land in Moya without detection. But the design of the prowler was the least of their concerns right now. She sent a quick look around the bay, then approached the open craft slowly. It didn't take much to realize that the prowler and the bay around it was empty. She climbed the rungs and took a look inside.

D'Argo had stopped below and narrowed his eyes a little. "I know that smell," he said.

"What smell?" Aeryn asked and glanced down at him. "There's nothing in here indicating who the pilot might be," she added.

"I know who the pilot is," D'Argo insisted, reached up and grabbed the back of her vest to pull her down. "That's John's smell. I would recognize it anywhere."

Aeryn jumped down and stared at him. "What?" She couldn't believe what he was saying, mainly because she considered it to be impossible. "What the frell are you saying, Luxan?"

"John is on Moya. His scent is heavy on this craft," he said and waved at the prowler.

"D'Argo, no offence here, I know your olfactory sense is superior, but if John had come in, don't you think he would have let us know? And if it was him, where is he?"

The Luxan frowned. "I cannot answer that, Aeryn, but I can tell you how he got to wherever he is now," he said and started out the bay. "Follow me."

Together they made their way through Moya's tiers and corridors, following a scent trail that was erratic at best. D'Argo didn't know what to expect when they finally found the Human, but he seemed to know without the shadow of a doubt that it was John.

Aeryn followed close behind him, her disbelief coloring her reactions, but she said nothing.

D'Argo turned a corner and came to a stop. "He's in his quarters," he said quietly.

Aeryn threw caution to the wind by dropping her pulse riffle and rushed into the cell. D'Argo followed her, still keeping his Qualta blade at the ready just in case.

She stopped halfway to the bed and just stared at John. He looked pale, harried, like he had been pulled through the wringer. He was wearing a black t-shirt and black sweats and there was a moist spot on his stomach, making her assume his wound had opened up again and was bleeding. She closed the distance and hunkered down next to the bed, briefly pressing the back of one hand against her lips to keep her emotions at bay. "John?" she whispered and reached out to touch his shoulder.

He made a sound, shifted his head a little and cracked his eyelids. For a microt all he did was lie there and squint at the ceiling. Then he turned his face in her direction and a ghost of a smile crept over his lips. "Aeryn."

She pressed her lips together into a tight line and settled onto the edge of the bed. She trailed her fingertips over his face, taking in the devastating after-effects of that frelling chair. "Look at you," she whispered. "I can't believe he did this to you again."

His smile faltered and his lids drifted shut.

"How the frell ..." she tried, but stopped when D'Argo placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Let him rest," he said quietly.

She glanced up at him, then nodded. "Yes, of course," she agreed.

***

He woke up with a start, then grimaced at the dull ache in his head. It took him a moment to realize where he was before it all came back to him. He sat up slowly, winching at the tight pain from his stomach wound, and briefly glanced around his quarters.

He remembered vaguely how he had come to be back on Moya, and there was a big part of him that thought this was a dream. It had to be, really, because what he had pulled off in a severely depleted stated was impossible.

"Ow," he rasped, when he pulled his feet over the edge of the bed and settled them on the floor.

One of the reasons why he thought this had to be a dream was the absence of anyone else. Unless they hadn't noticed his return yet? Shifting a little, he tried to get up, but had to stop his attempts because it hurt too damned much.

"Pilot?" he called, appalled at how rusty his voice sounded. "Anyone home?"

" _Commander. How good to hear your voice,_ " Pilot's voice rang from the speaker system. " _Are you alright?_ "

He coughed lightly. "As alright as I can be, I guess," he said and cleared his throat. "Where is everybody?"

" _They decided to let you sleep. I shall alert them that you are awake,_ " Pilot said.

"Thanks. You're the man," John countered, bracing himself against the edge of the bed. He felt like curling up on himself. Sitting upright was torture on the wound, but he didn't think that curling up would make it better.

It didn't take long before he heard footsteps approaching and moments later Aeryn, D'Argo and Chiana stepped into his cell.

John looked up and couldn't help a smile. "Hey, guys," he said and shifted stiffly to get a little more comfortable.

Aeryn was the first to move forward. She hunkered down in front of him, placing her hands on his knees. "How the frell did you get away from Scorpius?" she asked.

That would be her first question, wouldn't it? He smirked - or hoped he did. "Let's just say for now that he underestimated me," he said, drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment. "I'd better lie down again," he added. The world around him had become decidedly unsteady and it was making his nauseous.

"Yes, you'd better," Aeryn agreed. She helped him as much as he would let her and then settled down on the edge of the bed.

"I don't get how I found my way back here, though," he admitted. "I mean ... I wasn't exactly sure of where you guys were ... or where I was, for that matter."

Aeryn sent a look back at D'Argo, who looked all kinds of serious. "The black ghost you stole was programmed to track the pathfinder beacon in Moya," Aeryn said. "You don't remember setting it for that?"

"Oh yeah, the beacon," John muttered and focused on her. "I was pretty out of it when I ... what's a black ghost?" He had suddenly picked up on what she had said.

"The prowler you stole. It's a black ghost. It's a special ops craft, outfitted with a lot of helpful additions. Like the shimmer and the ability to track signals over long distances," Aeryn explained.

"Shimmer?" He wasn't really sure he was getting all of this right now.

"The shimmer is similar to the cloaking device in D'Argo's ship," Aeryn said. "I think they adapted it from Luxan technology."

"Oh," John muttered, then focused on her despite the rising ache behind his eyes. "So, that's why they didn't follow me, huh?"

"Must be. I can't tell if you had it activated, but since we have yet to see even the indication of a command carrier in the area, I think it's a safe bet that you were not followed," Aeryn agreed. The worry in both her tone and her expression was hard to miss. "What the frell did he do to you this time around?"

John snorted and briefly closed his eyes. "He thinks I still have the tech, that it's only buried. He wants to dig it out. With a teaspoon," he rasped and covered his face with both hands. "I am so screwed," he groaned.

"You've been screwed ever since you ran into him," she countered with a small smile and rubbed his arm lightly. "How is your wound?"

He dropped his hands again and raised his head to look down himself. "It hurts," he said and squinted at her. "They changed the bandage once, but ..."

"We should check it, make sure it's not infected," Chiana suggested and slid closer.

"She's right," Aeryn agreed and glanced up at the Nebari girl. "Could you get the bag?"

Chiana nodded and rushed off.

"How'd you know I was back? Did Pilot see me come in?" John asked.

"No, which is why I think the shimmer was active. Pilot detected the prowler in the landing bay during one of his sweeps. D'Argo picked up on your scent when we went to take a look. We thought we had a spy on board," Aeryn said.

"You still might," John said, not happy about the implications. "I don't think he stuffed any more hardware into me, but ... I didn't remember the neuro-tracer chip either."

"Perhaps we should scan him?" D'Argo suggested. "Just to be sure?"

Aeryn nodded and rose. "Chiana," she called. "Meet us in the med bay."

" _Got it_ ," came the instant reply.

"Can you walk?" Aeryn asked, returning her attention to John.

He pushed up on his elbows and briefly assessed his own condition, then shook his head. "I don't think so. Just sitting up makes me nauseous."

Aeryn glanced at D'Argo, who gave her a brief look, then shrugged. "I can take you," he said and stepped forward.

"I'm really not in favor of being carried around like that," John complained. "Can't you get that stretcher-thing again?"

"It will take too long," Aeryn countered and gave D'Argo another look, which the Luxan chose to ignore.

John wasn't entirely clear on what was going on, but didn't much care about it either. His main concern was finding out what new atrocities Scorpius might have stashed inside him.

D'Argo picked him up as if he weighed nothing and he had to remind himself to keep quiet about that. Of course, the movement sent shivers of pain through his already sore stomach and that helped divert his attention away from being carried around like a little kid.

In the med bay, D'Argo deposited him on the scanner bed and he gratefully stretched out while hoping his stomach would stop cramping so much. He shuddered briefly, feeling that itch under his skin again.

"Are you alright, my friend?" D'Argo asked and briefly draped a hand over John's brow.

John narrowed his eyes at him. "Define alright," he countered and grimaced when D'Argo pulled his hand away. "My skin's crawling."

Aeryn frowned lightly. "Where?" she asked.

"Uhm ... everywhere," he countered and exhaled sharply when the sensation stopped and was followed by a stab in the wound. "Shit," he hissed, "that hurt."

"Let me see," Aeryn said and started the scan. Her brow furrowed into a frown. "Frell," she muttered.

"What?" John twisted his head to get a look at the display and saw dozens of lit points, all of them converging on the wound. "What the hell are those?"

Aeryn ran the scanner again and this time all the little points had moved into the wound. "They're evacuating," she said, obviously confused by this.

"They? Who's they? What are they?" John pushed. Nausea rippled through him, making him struggle to keep the bile down. "Aeryn," he urged when she didn't respond.

"Probes," Aeryn finally said and put the scanner aside before pulling the edge of his t-shirt up. The bandage over the wound was alive with movement. "And they're evacuating the same way they came in," she added and peeled the edge off the bandage off and carefully pulled it away from his skin. The dried-out synth-flesh fell away too and with it the little probes dropped to the floor. Most of them were still wiggling, but as he watched, some of them slowed and stopped moving altogether. "For once, that frelling chair may have done some good," Aeryn said thoughtfully.

John kept his mouth shut because the sight of all those little bugs - artificial or not - dropping out of his wound made his previous struggle to keep whatever food he had in him to a battle of the ages.

"Better get him a bucket," Chiana chided and grabbed one when no one else did. She barely managed to hand it to him before he rolled over on his side and threw up.

"Frell," Aeryn muttered, noting that the wound wasn't the only exit strategy for the probes.

John winced at the sensation of bringing up hardware from his stomach, which upped the nausea. "Aw man," he groaned. "I felt empty before. This isn't helping."

Aeryn took a hold of the bucket. "Are you done?" she asked.

He considered it for a moment, then nodded weakly before unhanding the bucket and slumping back onto the scanner bed.

"Lie still. I'll run the scan again," she said. First she cleaned the wound as thoroughly as she could, then grabbed the scanner and ran it slowly over his body again. "Looks like they're all out," she said. "The scanner is not showing any further indications of hardware."

"Oh joy," John rasped. "I felt bad before. I feel worse now," he added.

That made Aeryn worry instantly. "You are supposed to feel better now that the probes are gone," she said.

John sighed. Why did she always have to take everything so literally? Sebaceans could do sarcasm. He knew they could. Scorpius was all sarcasm all the time. "That's not ..." he tried, but gave up right there. "Never mind. Can I go back to sleep now?"

"Not until I've deal with your wound," Aeryn said, opened the bag Chiana had procured and brought out a packet of synth-flesh, but D'Argo grabbed her wrist, stopping her before she could open it.

"What the frell are you doing? That's what started this in the first place," the Luxan said, concern in his voice.

"What?" John raised his head and tried to keep up. Most of all he wanted to sleep, but that was ominous enough to warrant his attention for a bit longer.

Aeryn pulled her wrist out of D'Argo's grasp. "I cleaned it up, of course," she said, her tone a little tight.

"And what if you missed one? Or two? Who's to say they can't take control again?" D'Argo demanded.

Aeryn held the packet out to him. "Scan the frelling thing if you don't believe me," she snapped. "He needs all the help he can get right now. And this seems to work so much better on him than it does on Sebaceans in general."

"What am I? Chopped liver?" John inserted a little angrily.

Both Aeryn and D'Argo stared at him for a second. "What?" Aeryn asked.

"Can I have a say in this?" he asked.

She looked a little baffled, like she hadn't expected him to ask for input, but then she nodded. "Of course."

"Thanks," he said and shifted his attention to D'Argo. "So, you were saying about this causing what?"

The Luxan glanced at Aeryn and grimaced. "The probes were in the synth-flesh packs. Scorpius must have arranged for that. When they came in contact with your wound, they invaded you and took control."

John blinked and shifted his attention back to Aeryn. "And you want to put that stuff on me again?" he asked, just trying to get clear on what was going on right now.

"I cleaned it. There are no probes left in this package," she insisted, grabbed the scanner and ran it over the package. The display came up empty, showing just the faint outlines of the package and her hand holding it. "No hardware."

He met her eyes for a moment, then dropped his head back down on the scanner bed. "Do your worst," he muttered and draped an arm over his eyes. The thought of having to endure a slowly healing stomach wound overrode the fear of there being more hardware in that package of synth-flesh. He wanted to get better as fast as possible and he trusted Aeryn's judgment.

***

It took days before he felt even marginally better. He spent a lot of time asleep and even more time feeling crappy when he was awake, but the shivers abated, the headache withdrew, and he stopped waking up soaked in sweat with memories of the chair ripping his psyche to shreds.

Aeryn spent a lot of time with him, keeping him company when he was awake and watching over him when he slept. His wound healed fast and eventually she was able to leave the synth-flesh off and give the new skin time to breathe.

He stood on shaky legs in front of the mirror and stared at his stomach. The skin was tender, a little red, but there was almost no sign of the shot wound anymore. Aeryn stepped up behind him, looking at his reflection over his shoulder. "It looks better," she said.

"Yeah," he agreed, his voice still rusty.

"And how do you feel?" she asked and almost gingerly touched the skin between his shoulder blades.

The touch sent a shiver through him. "I don't really know," he admitted reluctantly and cleared his throat.

"Your night terrors are getting better," she suggested and slipped her arms around him, making sure her hands did not come in contact with the still tender skin of the former wound.

"Yeah, I guess," he agreed. "You know ... I kinda thought that ... I've been scared of this damned chair since the first time he stuck me in it and ..." He shrugged, searching for the words, and wrapped his arms over hers, "... I partly figured that I would realize it wasn't as bad as I remembered it."

She rested her chin on his shoulder, staring at their reflection. "And?"

He smirked joylessly. "It was worse," he said, regret in his voice.

"Probably because you were wounded as well," she suggested.

He exhaled deeply and closed his eyes, leaning back against her a little. "Maybe," he said and began to realize he was cold. "I should get dressed."

"You should," she agreed. "You're shivering."

"It's not exactly warm in here," he countered evenly, but made no move to disengage himself from her embrace. "And I'm still not really up to speed, you know."

"I know," she agreed quietly. "You should maybe rest a little more?"

"I'm getting bedsores. I think I'm through sleeping through the day," he said.

"Does that mean you'll go on food runs with us soon?" she queried with a small smile on her lips.

The thought of leaving Moya, of subjecting himself to the dangers out there, made him feel very cold inside. "Not yet," he said and finally pulled forward out of her arms. A little stiffly, he picked up his t-shirt and pulled it on, then turned back to face her, but didn't really meet her eyes. "It's gonna take a bit."

Aeryn grabbed his face with both hands. "You cannot let this beat you. Not this. Not Scorpius," she said sternly.

He grimaced and grabbed her wrists in turn, meeting her eyes. "It already has," he said quietly. "As long as Scorpius is out there ..." He stopped, shook his head lightly and pulled her hands off his face. "I can't. Not yet."

"Scorpius will most likely be out there for a long time to come, John. He will most likely outlive you by about a hundred cycles. Are you going to hide on Moya for the rest of your natural life?" she asked. Her tone was not judgmental, but he saw the concern in her eyes.

He glanced off to the side and pulled back a step. "If that's what it takes to keep him away from me ... maybe," he said with a light shrug, stepped around her and walked over to the bed, where he sank down on the edge.

Aeryn turned around and watched him with a slight frown furrowing her brow. "So, he's won then? He's beaten you?" she asked.

He sat there and considered socks, but didn't know why he would need them right now. "Looks like," he said and briefly looked up to meet her eyes, then looked away again. With a tight smile, he held up his right hand, which shivered visibly. "When I even think of him, I get the jitters."

"Then don't think of him. Let it go, John. Focus on things you want to do. He can't track you anymore. That means he doesn't know where you are. It's a big universe out there. The chances of our paths crossing again are not very big," she said and folded her arms over her chest.

He picked up one sock and eyed it, then dropped it again, leaned forward and propped his elbows on his thighs while rubbing his left palm with his right thumb. It was a habit he had picked up at some point and couldn't shed. "Yet we keep running into him," he mused. "And every time we do, I'm worse off afterwards." He shifted a little and glanced down at his bare feet, considering that he was still a little cold and should probably put his socks on anyway. "And I keep getting in trouble even when he's not around," he added.

"The Sovereign would never have noticed you if it hadn't been for Scorpius' soldiers chasing you, John. You cannot think that way. Scorpius cannot track you, therefore he cannot find you. If we stay away from worlds that Peacekeepers frequent, we should stand a fair chance of never running into him again. If we stay out of trouble, keep our heads down, we should be fine," she countered.

He snorted a little helplessly at that. "I am as far from fine as I can get, Aeryn," he said and looked up to meet her eyes. This time he held her gaze. "The mere idea of making landfall anywhere makes me nauseous. I can feel cold sweat breaking out all over my body when I even consider it."

"Yes, I understand that," she said and settled down on the edge of the gaming table. "I understand that you need to get over this, that it takes time, but you have to want to get over it, John. And giving up is not like you. I refuse to believe that he has defeated you. And you cannot let him keep you from wanting to meet new people. You just have to go about it differently."

"Be more careful, not so naïve, you mean?" he asked with a joyless smirk and dropped his gaze to the floor again. "Yeah, I kinda get that I'm asking for trouble by wanting to trust others."

"That's not what I meant," Aeryn said, slightly exasperated now. She covered the distance between them in two long strides, hunkered down and grabbed his hands. "Look at me," she demanded, which he did. "You are not like this, John. This is not you. You have to find your center again. And maybe ... you should learn some defense mechanisms. I can teach you what I know. D'Argo can teach you a few things as well. Frell, even Chiana can probably teach you a thing or two."

That made him smirk. "Like how I should frell everything in sight to get what I want?" he asked.

Aeryn narrowed her eyes at him. "That was not what I was thinking, no. But she has managed to get through some pretty tight spots in her short life. She knows how to handle others, knows who to trust and who not." She tightened her grip on his hands. "What you need to learn most of all is that you cannot help everybody and whatever the frell Scorpius wants is not his to take. Push him out of your mind. Bury your need to make up for something you did not cause. You have to learn how to let things go."

Her words made him focus inward and he frowned lightly at a dawning realization. "Huh," he muttered.

"What?" she asked, eyeing him closely.

"I've just realized ..." He focused on her. "I haven't felt Harvey around for a while. Not since ..." He arched an eyebrow. "Do you think that my latest experience here could have ... mopped up that neural bleed?"

"Who knows?" Aeryn countered. "Is there any way you've been able to conjure him up before?"

He closed his eyes and focused on the wraith that had been living in his mind for so long now and found nothing but emptiness staring back at him. He opened his eyes again and there was such a profound sense of relief at that realization that he felt a little lightheaded. "He's gone," he whispered. "I really think he's gone."

"So, it wasn't all bad then, was it," Aeryn said.

It settled something inside him that he hadn't known had come unhinged. Even though he knew it would take some time before he was back to his good old self, he now felt that there was a definite possibility that he could get there within a foreseeable future. "Not the kind of therapy I would recommend to anyone, but ... I guess you're right," he said.

Aeryn smiled. "Well, at least you got something good out of it this time," she said, leaned in and kissed him.

When they're lips parted again, he just stared at her for a moment, then gave a half-shrug. "Looks like it," he agreed and could feel his renewed hope for a better future budding again. There was something nagging at him, though, and he focused on her. "What's going on between you and Big D, by the way?"

Aeryn stared at him for a moment. "What are you talking about?" she asked, obviously confused by this question.

"You kept glancing at each other, like there's something ... I don't know that D'Argo wants me to know and you don't," John said. There was a blooming suspicion in the back of his mind, but he kept trying to squash it out because he didn't want to come across as the jealous boyfriend.

Aeryn pursed her lips, obviously aware of what he was asking for, and glanced down at their joined hands. "Over the cycles I've known you, John, I have become very aware of the fact that Human males tend to be stronger physically than Human females."

He didn't really see the relevance of that observation. "Okay," he said.

"That is not the case for Sebaceans," she said and eyed him closely. "I am physically as strong as any Sebacean male."

He eyed her, wondering what the punchline was. "Okay. I kinda got that impression when you wiped the floor with me the first time we met," he admitted.

"Oh yes, that's right," she said and gave him a small smile. "I had forgotten about that." She released his hands, got up and took a step back. "The fact is, I am physically stronger than you. D'Argo suggested at one point that it might be best if I did not ... let you know this. He thought you might find it awkward."

He just sat there and stared at her for a moment. The idea that there was something going on between her and the Luxan had crossed his mind and that had not been something he would have appreciated. This was not what he had expected at all. "Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes, pretty much," Aeryn agreed with a light nod.

He couldn't help a grin at that. "Aeryn, babe, I don't care if you're stronger than me. It doesn't make any difference to me as long as you don't ... you know ... knock me on my ass when I say stuff you don't like."

She struggled briefly against a smile, but then let it come after all. "I promise I won't," she said. "Now, get up. Let's go eat. I'm hungry."

He rose carefully to his feet and slipped an arm around her back. "At least I'm still taller than you," he said, which made her grin.

The End


End file.
